THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY 



That was said, however, before evolution had given 

 meaning and interest to the comparative method 

 in the human sciences. It was found that the 

 "voice of God" was worse than ambiguous: incit- 

 ing the Jesuits to murder Bruno, Calvin to murder 

 Servetus, the Mohammedan to murder the Chris- 

 tian ; encouraging infanticide here, matricide there, 

 incest somewhere else. The intuitional ethics does 

 not explain these things, while modern psychology 

 has no difficulty in explaining the genesis of con- 

 science in a dog or a child. 



The Spencerian ethics "filled the vacuum" by 

 its demonstration that morality is a natural evo- 

 lution of nature, as valid a product of the cosmic 

 process as a man or a star. In so doing it opposed 

 not only those who derived their ethical sanctions 

 from Sinai or St. Paul or Aquinas "critics of a 

 certain class [who], far from rejoicing that ethi- 

 cal principles otherwise derived by them, coincide 

 with ethical principles scientifically derived, are 

 offended by the coincidence" but also their oppo- 

 nents, who maintained that morality is simply 

 the fruit of superstition, and must rot with its 

 rotting. Notably does the Spencerian ethics re- 

 fute the pestilent doctrine of Nietzsche, which that 

 brilliant writer and shallow thinker conceived to 

 be derived from the Darwinian theory of natural 

 selection, but which ignores just one -half of the 

 facts facts which show that, as Spencer says, 

 " self-sacrifice is no less primordial than self-pres- 

 ervation," Here, as so often, evolution is the rec- 

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