22 IN TR 01) UCTION. 



means. For by an astonishing tour deforce — the last, 

 as his former associates in the evolutionary ranks 

 have not failed to remind him, which might have been 

 expected of him — he ejects himself from the world- 

 order, and washes his hands of it in the name of Ethi- 

 cal Man. After sharing the fortunes of Evolution all 

 his life, bearing its burdens and solving its doubts, he 

 abandons it without a pang, and sets up an imperium 

 in imperio, where, as a moral being, the " cosmic " 

 Struggle troubles him no more. " Cosmic Nature," he 

 says, in a parting shot at his former citadel, " is no 

 school of virtue, but the headquarters of the enemy of 

 ethical nature." J So far from the Ascent of Man run- 

 ning along the ancient line, " Social progress means a 

 checking of the cosmic process at every step, and the 

 substitution for it of another, which may be called the 

 ethical process ; the end of which is not the survival 

 of those who may happen to be fittest, in respect of 

 the whole of the conditions which exist, but of those 

 who are ethically the best. 2 " 



The expedient, to him, was a necessity. Viewing 

 Nature as Mr. Huxley viewed it there was no other 

 refuge. The " cosmic process " meant to him the 

 Struggle for Life, and to escape from the Struggle 

 for Life he was compelled to turn away from the 

 world-order, which had its being because of it. As it 

 happens, Mr. Huxley has hit upon the right solution, 

 only the method by which he reaches it is wholly 

 wrong. And the mischievous result of it is obvious 

 — it leaves all lower Nature in the lurch. With 

 a curious disregard of the principle of Continuity, to 



1 Evolution and Ethics, p. 27. * Ibid., p. 33. 



