EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 25 



without the establishment of a capital distinction between the 

 case of involuntary and that of willful misdeed between a merely 

 wrong action and a guilty one. And, with increasing refinement 

 of moral appreciation, the problem of desert, which arises out of 

 this distinction, acquired more and more theoretical and practical 

 importance. If life must be given for life, yet it was recognized 

 that the unintentional slayer did not altogether deserve death ; 

 and, by a sort of compromise between the public and the private 

 conception of justice, a sanctuary was provided in which he might 

 take refuge from the avenger of blood. 



The idea of justice thus underwent a gradual sublimation from 

 punishment and reward according to acts, to punishment and re- 

 ward according to desert ; or, in other words, according to motive. 

 Righteousness that is, action from right motive not only be- 

 came synonymous with justice, but the positive constituent of 

 innocence and the very heart of goodness. 



Now when the ancient sage, whether Indian or Greek, who 

 had attained to this conception of goodness, looked the world, and 

 especially human life, in the face, he found it as hard as we do to 

 bring the course of evolution into harmony with even the ele- 

 mentary requirements of the ethical ideal of the just and the 

 good. 



If there is one thing plainer than another, it is that neither 

 the pleasures nor the pains of life in the merely animal world are 

 distributed according to desert, for it is admittedly impossible 

 for the lower orders of sentient beings to deserve either the one 

 or the other. If there is a generalization from the facts of human 

 life, which has the assent of thoughtful men in every age and 

 country, it is that the violator of ethical rules constantly escapes 

 the punishment which he deserves ; that the wicked flourishes like 

 a green bay tree, while the righteous begs his bread ; that the sins 

 of the fathers are visited upon the children ; that in the realm of 

 Nature ignorance is punished just as severely as willful wrong ; 

 and that thousands upon thousands of innocent beings suffer for 

 the crime or the unintentional trespass of one. 



Greek and Semite and Indian are agreed upon this subject. 

 The book of Job is at one with the " Works and Days " and the 

 Buddhist Sutras ; the Psalmist and the Preacher of Israel with 

 the tragic poets of Greece. What is a more common motive of 

 the ancient tragedy, in fact, than the unfathomable injustice of 

 the nature of things ? What is more deeply felt to be true than 

 its presentation of the destruction of the blameless by the work 

 of his own hands, or by the fatal operation of the sins of others ? 

 Surely (Edipus was pure of heart ; it was the natural sequence of 

 events the cosmic process which drove him, in all innocence, 



VOL. XLIT. 3 



