The Evolution of Morals. 263 



thought, and for that mind morality can have no 

 longer any real meaning. The evolutionist may reply 

 that his is not the only system of determinism; 

 that he lays no greater constraint on man's freedom 

 than the Calvinist. But the fact is not so : the Cal- 

 vinist does not deny liberty, he contends for it.* 

 What he rejects is an imagined liberty that can have 

 no existence in a real world a liberty which divests 

 the individual of every trace of character, deprives 

 reason of all decisive judgment, and robs motives of 

 their power. Moral action is no more possible in 

 vacuo than vital action. 



Exception is taken to the evolution hypothesis in the 

 interests of morality, on the ground of its doctrine of 

 physical causation in mental operations. Man knows 

 himself to choose and to resolve : it is when he would 

 carry out his intention through the organism that he 

 becomes conscious of the control of physical law. He 

 recognizes in this realm the fixed physical order of 

 the world, and by obedience accomplishes his purpose. 

 It is not correct to say that moral action is, on the 

 intuitional theory, uncaused. The intuitionist seeks 

 a cause, but looks for it in the man himself in his 

 intellectual and moral nature. Man in his own inner 



* In his Dissertatio de Libertate Humana, contra Spinozum, 

 Turretin gives the following definition of liberty : " Libertas, 

 juxta simplicissimani et receptissimam ejus notionem, est 

 facultas eligendi, seu, quod idem est, facultas agendi ut libet; 

 vel, ut aliis verbis rem eanjlem exponamus, imperium quod quis 

 Jiabet in proprias actiones." 



