IX.] EVOLUTION ANT) ETHICS. 233 



we know that in ancient Greece dishonesty was openly 

 and actually associated with happy consequences .... 

 when the concentrated experience of previous generations 

 was held, not indeed to justify, but to excuse by utilitarian 

 considerations, craft, dissimulation, sensuality, selfishness." 



This dogma is opposed to the moral consciousness of 

 many as to the events of their own lives ; and the author, 

 for one, believes that it is absolutely contrary to fact. 



History affords multitudes of instances : an example 

 may be selected from one of the most critical periods of 

 modern times. Let it be granted that Lewis the Sixteenth 

 of France and his queen had all the defects attributed to 

 them by the most hostile of serious historians ; let all the 

 excuses possible be made for his predecessor, Lewis the 

 Fifteenth, and also for Madame de Pompadour : can it be 

 pretended that there are grounds for affirming that the 

 vices of the two former so far exceeded those of the latter, 

 that their respective fates were plainly and evidently just ? 

 that while the two former died in their beds, after a life of 

 the most extreme luxury, the others merited to stand forth 

 through coming time as examples of the most appalling and 

 calamitous tragedy ? l 



1 The same period supplies us with a yet more striking example. H. 

 Von Sybel, in his "French Revolution" (translated by W. C. Perry), 

 vol. iv. p. 321, says of the unfortunate young Lewis the Seventeenth : 

 ' ' No one can "read the reports of the martyrdom of this unhappy child 

 without the deepest emotion. Simon the Cobbler, a neighbour and 

 admirer of Marat, had been appointed, on his recommendation, by Robes- 

 pierre, as the jailer of the young Capet." .... "The ill-treatment of 

 the feeble child became his daily refreshment from the ennui of the 

 prison, his pastime and his patriotic office. He clothed the Prince in a 

 sansculotte dress, compelled him to wear, a Jacobin cap, made him drunk 

 with ardent spirits, and forced him to sing indecent songs. This treat- 

 ment was varied by abuse, blows, and cruelties of every kind whenever 

 the child made mention of his parents, whenever he showed the slightest 



