22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



holding of all that can be kept, which constitute the essence of 

 the struggle for existence, have answered. For his successful 

 progress, as far as the savage state, man has been largely indebted 

 to those qualities which he shares with the ape and the tiger : his 

 exceptional physical organization ; his cunning, his sociability, 

 his curiosity and his imitativeness ; his ruthless and ferocious de- 

 structiveness when his anger is roused by opposition. 



But, in proportion as men have passed from anarchy to social 

 organization and in proportion as civilization has grown in worth, 

 these deeply ingrained serviceable qualities have become defects. 

 After the manner of successf ul persons, civilized man would gladly 

 kick down the ladder by which he has climbed. He would be only 

 too pleased to see " the ape and the tiger die/' But they decline 

 to suit his convenience ; and the unwelcome intrusion of these 

 boon companions of his hot youth into the ranged existence of 

 civil life adds pains and griefs, innumerable and immeasurably 

 great, to those which the cosmic process necessarily brings on the 

 mere animal. In fact, civilized man brands all these ape and tiger 

 promptings with the name of sins ; he punishes many of the acts 

 which flow from them as crimes ; and, in extreme cases, he does 

 his best to put an end to the survival of the fittest of former days 

 by axe and rope. 



I have said that civilized man has reached this point ; the as- 

 sertion is perhaps too broad and general ; I had better put it that 

 ethical man has attained thereto. The science of ethics professes 

 to furnish us with a reasoned rule of life ; to tell us what is right 

 action and why it is so. Whatever difference of opinion may 

 exist among experts, there is a general consensus that the ape and 

 tiger methods of the struggle for existence are not reconcilable 

 with sound ethical principles. 



The hero of our story descended the bean-stalk, and came back 

 to the common world, where fare and work were alike hard ; where 

 ugly competitors were much commoner than beautiful princesses ; 

 and where the everlasting battle with self was much less sure to 

 be crowned with victory than a turn-to with a giant. We have 

 done the like. Thousands upon thousands of our fellows, thou- 

 sands of years ago, have preceded us in finding themselves face to 

 face with the same dread problem of evil. They also have seen 

 that the cosmic process is evolution ; that it is full of wonder, full 

 of beauty, and, at the same time, full of pain. They have sought 

 to discover the bearing of these great facts on ethics ; to find out 

 whether there is, or is not, a sanction for morality in the ways of 

 the cosmos. 



Theories of the universe, in which the conception of evolution 

 plays a leading part, were extant at least six centuries before our 



