258 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



eral theologians, in the face of the varying ethical 

 standards which mark the Old Testament and the 

 New, no longer insist on the absoluteness of moral 

 codes, and so fall into line with the evolutionist in 

 his theory of their relativeness. For society in its 

 advance from lower to higher conceptions of duty, 

 completely reverses its ethics, looking back with 

 horror on that which was once permitted and un- 

 questioned. 



It is with this checking of " the ape and tiger," 

 and this fostering of the " angel " in man, that Hux- 

 ley dealt in his Romanes Lecture. There was much 

 unintelligent, and some wilful, misunderstanding of 

 his argument, else a prominent Catholic biologist 

 would hardly have welcomed it as a possible prelude 

 to Huxley's submission to the Church. Yet the 

 reasoning was clear enough, and in no wise contra- 

 vened the application of Evolution to morals. Hux- 

 ley showed that Evolution is both cosmical and ethical. 

 Cosmic Evolution has resulted in the universe with 

 its non-living and living contents, and since, deal- 

 ing with the conditions which obtain on our planet, 

 there is not sufficient elbow-room or food for all the 

 offspring of living things, the result is a furious 

 struggle in which the strong win and transmit their 

 advantages to their descendants. Nature is wholly 

 selfish; the race is to the swift, and the battle to the 

 strong. 



But there are limits set to that struggle by man 

 in the substitution, also within limits, of social prog- 



