EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 183 



by even the meekest and the least rational of optimists sugges- 

 tions of the pride of reason. As to the concluding aphorism, its 

 fittest place would be as an inscription in letters of mud over the 

 portal of some " stye of Epicurus " ; * for that is where the logical 

 application of it to practice would land men, with every aspira- 

 tion stifled and every effort paralyzed. Why try to set right 

 what is right already ? Why strive to improve the best of all 

 possible worlds ? Let us eat and drink, for as to-day all is right, 

 so to-morrow all will be. 



But the attempt of the Stoics to blind themselves to the reality 

 of evil, as a necessary concomitant of the cosmic process, had less 

 success than that of the Indian philosophers to exclude the reality 

 of good from their purview. Unfortunately, it is much easier to 

 shut one's eyes to good than to evil. Pain and sorrow knock at 

 our doors more loudly than pleasure and happiness, and the prints 

 of their heavy footsteps are less easily effaced. Before the grim 

 realities of practical life the pleasant fictions of optimism van- 

 ished. If this were the best of all possible worlds, it nevertheless 

 proved itself a very inconvenient habitation for the ideal sage. 



The stoical summary of the whole duty of man, " Live accord- 

 ing to Nature/' would seem to imply that the cosmic process is an 

 exemplar for human conduct. Ethics would thus become applied 

 natural history. In fact, a confused employment of the maxim 

 in this sense has done immeasurable mischief in later times. It 

 has furnished an axiomatic foundation for the philosophy of 

 philosophasters and for the moralizing of sentimentalists. But 

 the Stoics were, at bottom, not merely noble but sane men ; and 

 if we look closely into what they really meant by this ill-used 

 phrase, it will be found to present no justification for the mis- 

 chievous conclusions that have been deduced from it. 



In the language of the Stoa, " Nature " was a word of many 

 meanings. There was the "Nature" of the cosmos and the 

 "Nature" of man. In the latter, the animal "nature," which 

 man shares with a moiety of the living part of the cosmos, was 

 distinguished from a higher "nature." Even in this higher 

 nature there were grades of rank. The logical faculty is an in- 

 strument which may be turned to account for any purpose. The 

 passions and the emotions are so closely tied to the lower nature 

 that they may be considered to be pathological rather than nor- 

 mal phenomena. The one supreme, hegemonic faculty which con- 



* I use the well-known phrase, but decline responsibility for the libel upon Epicurus, 

 whose doctrines were far less compatible with existence in a stye than those of the Cynics. 

 If it were steadily borne in mind that the conception of the " flesh " as the source of evil, 

 and that the great saying, " Initium est salutis notitia peccati " [the beginning of salvation 

 is the recognition of sin], are the property of Epicurus, fewer illusions about Epicureanism 

 would pass muster for accepted truth. 



