IX.] EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 207 



of self-denial done for the good of others, and tending even 

 toward the destruction of the actor, could hardly be ac- 

 counted for on Darwinian principles alone ; for self-immo- 

 lators must but rarely leave direct descendants, while the 

 community they benefit must by their destruction tend, so 

 far, to morally deteriorate. But devotion to others of the 

 same community is by no means all that has to be account- 

 ed for. Devotion to the whole human race, and devotion 

 to God 'in the form of asceticism have been and are very 

 generally recognized as " good ; " and the author contends 

 that it is simply impossible to conceive that such ideas and 

 sanctions should have been developed by " Natural Selec- 

 tion " alone, from only that degree of unselfishness neces- 

 sary for the preservation of brutally barbarous communities 

 in the struggle for life. That degree of unselfishness once 

 attained, further improvement would be checked by the 

 mutual opposition of diverging moral tendencies and spon- 

 taneous variations in all directions. Added to which, we 

 have the principle of reversion and atavism, tending power- 

 fully to restore and reproduce the more degraded anterior 

 condition whence the later and better state painfully 

 emerged. 



Very few, however, dispute the complete distinctness, 

 here and now, of the ideas of "duty" and " interest," what- 

 ever may have been the origin of those ideas. No one pre- 

 tends that ingratitude may, in any past abyss of time, have 

 been a virtue, or that it may be such now in Arcturus or 

 the Pleiades. Indeed, a certain eminent writer of the utili- 

 tarian school of ethics has amusingly and very instructively 

 shown how radically distinct even in his own mind are the 

 two ideas which he nevertheless endeavors to identify. Mr. 

 John Stuart Mill, in his examination of " Sir William Ham- 

 ilton's Philosophy," says: 7 if "I am informed that the 

 world is ruled by a Being whose attributes are infinite, but 



7 Page 103. 



