EVOLUTION 239 



therefore also into conflict with one another. Social and 

 individual ends to these modern prophets and reformers 

 assume the appearance of being mutually exclusive. The 

 very highest practical solution that is hoped for is a form 

 of compromise between them; and the utmost they expect 

 in the way of theory is some definition of the limits within 

 which social and individual activity should respectively be 

 confined. 



Such a view is apt to appear much more reasonable than 

 a more outspoken and unrestrained optimism which identi- 

 fies social and individual ends, and represents both as 

 evolving together. But I am inclined to think that it is 

 in reality less scientific and less useful for practice. It is, 

 indeed, only another example of the tendency of ordinary 

 thought to play fast and loose with great .principles, more 

 especially in the domain of ethics and social science. It 

 would be admitted that, within the sphere of physical 

 knowledge, the principle of uniformity, or of the rational 

 coherence of the parts within the whole, must be held in 

 its integrity. A world which allows any place for pure 

 contingency would be all irrational. Its laws or universals 

 would hold only now and then, and therefore never abso- 

 lutely ; and a law which, within its own domain, holds 

 only now and then or which is not absolute is, of course, 

 not a law. But it is not so generally recognized that it is 

 not a less unconditioned demand of the moral consciousness 

 that the world of morality should be in like manner 

 a true cosmos. In a word, there cannot be "one lost 

 good." 



But even apart from these ultimate conditions of intel- 

 lectual and moral activity, we should be very slow to 

 prescribe limits to the possibilities of the moral progress 



