398 ETHICS 



if they were properly the subject of moral praise or blame. In the 

 same way, when Huxley wrote, the old doctrine which Mill regarded 

 as philosophically extinct and only surviving as a popular error had 

 been revived by the impetus which the theory of evolution had 

 given to every branch of study; and Huxley was criticising the evo- 

 lutionist ethics of Spencer and others who looked for moral guidance 

 to the course of evolution. He, therefore, was led to speak of the 

 cosmic process as a possible subject of moral predicates, not neces- 

 sarily because he thought that application appropriate, but in order 

 to demonstrate the hollowness of the ethics of evolution by showing 

 that if the moral predicate could be applied at all, then the appro- 

 priate adjective would be not "good" but "bad." 



Perhaps there is more than this in Huxley; and Mill's expressions 

 often betray a direct and genuine moral condemnation of the methods 

 of nature as methods of wickedness; and, still more clearly, this 

 immediate moral disapproval may be found in expressions of common 

 experience as yet uncolored by philosophy. But if we examine these 

 we find that, while there is no reference to philosophical theories 

 about nature, the things approved or condemned are yet looked upon 

 as implying consciousness. In the lower stages of development this 

 implication is simply animistic; at a later period it becomes theo- 

 logical. But throughout experience moral judgments upon nature are 

 not passed upon mere nature. Its forces are regarded as expressing a 

 purpose or mind; and it is this that is condemned or approved. The 

 primitive man and the child do not merely condemn the misdoings of 

 inanimate objects; they wreak their vengeance upon them or punish 

 them: and this is a consequence of their animistic interpretation of 

 natural forces. Gradually, in the mental growth of the child, this ani- 

 mistic interpretation of things gives place to an understanding of the 

 natural laws of their working; and at the same time and by the same 

 degrees, the child ceases to inflict punishment upon the chair that 

 has fallen on him or to condemn its misdemeanor. Here the moral 

 judgment is displaced by the causal judgment; and the reason of its 

 displacement is the disappearance of mind or purpose from amongst 

 the phenomena. When the child comes to understand that the 

 chair falls by "laws of nature" which are not the expression of will, 

 like the acts done by himself or his companions, he ceases to disap- 

 prove or to resent, though he does not cease to feel pain or to im- 

 prove the circumstances by setting the chair firmly on the floor. 

 The recognition of natural causation as all that there is in the case 

 leaves no room for the moral attitude. So true is this that the same 

 result is sometimes thought to be a consequence of the scientific 

 understanding even of what is called moral causation, "tout com- 

 prendre c'est tout pardonner" as if knowledge of motive and cir- 

 cumstances were sufficient to dispense with praise or blame. 



