Postscript 355 



and which has drawn its inspiration largely from the hypo- 

 thesis of natural selection, has failed pathetically beyond 

 the power of words to express if done unintentionally; and 

 criminally in equal measure if done intentionally to under- 

 stand the real meaning of Darwin's teaching as a whole. 



Certain it is that had the German philosophers of Macht- 

 politik recognized the place of unqualified supremacy as- 

 cribed by Darwin to the mental and moral endowments of 

 man, it would have been impossible for them to make the 

 dogma of survival of the fittest serve their ends in any such 

 way as they have made it, and done so honestly. Attentive 

 reading of The Descent of Man makes it perfectly plain 

 that Darwin simply accepted all the higher human attri- 

 butes moral, esthetic, and religious, no less than those of 

 the intellect as fundamental data in his reasoning about 

 man's evolution. His sole effort as touching these was merely 

 to see in how far they could be regarded either as helped 

 forward in their development by natural selection, or at least 

 as not inconsistent with it. Apparently it never even oc- 

 curred to him to regard his hypothesis as supreme-over-all, 

 so that all attributes whatever, the noblest ones of man with 

 the rest, must either be forced into conformity with it, or 

 their reality and power virtually denied. "I fully subscribe 

 to the judgment," runs the opening sentence of the chapter 

 on "The Moral Sense," etc., "of those writers who maintain 

 that, of all the differences between man and the lower ani- 

 mals, the moral sense or conscience is by far the most im- 

 portant." And, especially significant at this time, Darwin 

 quotes with obvious approval, an apostrophe to Duty by 

 Kant, in which this "Wondrous thought" is represented as 

 "holding up its naked law" in the soul, and demanding 

 reverence. Darwin's entire discussion in this part of the 

 Descent makes it clear that what he had in mind was to 

 discover as far as possible the germs of "conscience," of 

 "feeling of right and wrong," of an "inward monitor," of 



