The Evolution of Morals. 2 7 1 



him nothing. The evolution of his personal life is a 

 brief process of adjustment, which soon reaches its 

 climax ; and then, the adverse influences predomina- 

 ting, the struggle is speedily ended. The great social 

 organization itself is overmastered by forces that are 

 sovereign over the direction and mode of its corporate 

 life. The sweep of these causes is beyond the reach, 

 or even the vision of the members. Why contend 

 for an evanescent dream ? Why wrestle with or seek 

 to aid the vast forces of the cosmos ? Let them drift 

 onward to universal disintegration. His own satis- 

 faction in life is for every man the main concern : 

 can evolutionism help him to a greater sum of plea- 

 sure ? Conflicting motives toss him to and fro ; 

 impulses are strong; passions turbulent: what ideal 

 can evolution furnish to the individual life, whereby 

 these conflicting influences may be set in their due 

 order ? What ultimate personal aim to regulate all 

 proximate aims ? Around us there is a ceaseless 

 struggle : more of pleasure than of pain, perhaps ; 

 but the pleasures and the pains very unequally dis- 

 pensed. Escape pain and seize pleasure, is the dictate 

 of self-indulgence. Evolutionism has no countervail- 

 ing persuasion to offer no "chief end" imperative 

 over all balancing of conflicting feelings; no moral 

 nature capable of being developed in strength and 

 beauty ; no future in which there may be reaped the 

 seed here sown in tears. 



4. The evolution hypothesis leaves man without 



