GROUNDS OF RATIONAL OPTIMISM 



which dissociates right-doing from an accompani- 

 ment of effort. To do justly and to love mercy is 

 no "merit," they think, unless, in one's heart of 

 hearts, one hates mercy and would rather do un- 

 justly. Nevertheless, the evolutionist, who is not 

 concerned with imputing merit or with passing 

 such judgments, is well content to believe that 

 human nature, which is at bottom responsible for 

 nearly all evil, may one day attain to such heights 

 that men shall do as they would be done by, not 

 for extrinsic and (ultimately) egoistic reasons, but 

 because that is their inevitable mode of self-ex- 

 pression. And if our opponents maintain that in- 

 evitable virtue is no more worthy of merit than 

 cloistered virtue, and, indeed, that doing the right 

 is not really to be called virtue if one likes doing 

 it, we, whose study of the human will leads us to 

 refrain from passing any such judgments upon 

 anybody, will not quarrel with them. It suffices 

 us that, seeing virtue already expressive of the 

 innermost nature of our holiest to-day, we may 

 believe it possible that, in time to come, the many 

 shall be raised to their level, so that sanity and 

 virtuousness shall be synonymous, and wrong- 

 doing be regarded as the mark of a rare and terrible 

 disease. 



The profoundest thinker among English poets 

 anticipated this vision of Spencer's; and perhaps 

 the critics who would deny and decry this most 

 radiantly optimistic of all the inferences from the 

 law of universal evolution will be surprised to hear 

 297 



