SCIENCE AND DEMOCRACY 387 



to see that such dicta taken alone were well calculated to 

 scatter doubt and pessimism broadcast.* 



Moreover, Huxley's own vaunted philosophic neutrality 

 is thus in reality found to be due to the fact that he for one 

 was too guarded to consider that there was a sufficient founda- 

 tion for a reliable philosophy of (at least) human life to be 

 raised upon the Darwinian theory. Whilst his vehement 

 utterances with all their weight of " authority " were leading 

 the then civilised world into pessimism, he vaunted his own 

 non-pessimism in the face of it all. Huxley's very vehemence 

 which had the further injurious effect of intimidating all 

 lesser scientific and literary "lights" ever since his mighty 

 days, and of rendering the very thought of ethics in connection 

 with Science "taboo," ouglrt really to have put us on our 

 guard and made us doubt the reasonableness of many of the 

 great comparative anatomist's pronouncements. 



I would not deny for a moment Huxley's great services to 

 science and free-thought, nor his occasional fair-mindedness, 

 so far as even ethics are concerned. I am far from inferring 

 that he, any more than Darwin, was animated by any but the 

 loftiest motives. What is unfortunately true, however, is that 

 as in the case of Nietzsche and of Treitschke, the evil effects 

 upon the minds of the people of their pessimistic utterances far 

 outweighed those which their otherwise good intentions might 

 have had.t 



* The Encyclopaedia Britannica says: "This approaches pure pessimism 

 Huxley's latest speculations on ethical problems are perhaps the least satisfactory 

 of his writings." This frequent survival of the "ethically worst" really another 

 admission of values is, of course, no argument against evolutionary ethics. The 

 difficulty lies in the inability to perceive that mere survival is no criterion of 

 success because frequently associated with pathogenesis. It appears that Nature 

 after all is not quite so intently bent on destruction as the Darwinian theory 

 demands, but is, on the contrary, wisely magnanimous. "Peradventure" there 

 may be some use that we do not as yet fully realise even in a backsliding species. 

 Rather than concede that there may be something wrong with their conception 

 of survival, however, Darwinians insist on the inversion that the wrong rests 

 with Nature. They insist that Nature shows a complete disregard for ethics, 

 and that the "ethically worst" in so far as they anyhow contrive to survive 

 must be classed among the fittest, that the liver-fluke is the evolutionary peer 

 of the philosopher. 



t The Right Rev. Bishop Mercer, writing in defence of Darwinism (Nineteenth 

 Century, February 1915) tcmpora midantur believes that Nietzsche is not with- 

 out excuse for his lack of focus, that there is a wide-spread suspicion that the 

 case against Darwinism is a strong one, and that it cannot be denied that 

 evolutionists have unfortunately laid such stress upon the factors of conflict 

 that they themselves have been tempted to accord it a lonely throne. 



AA 2 



