224 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ETHICS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE. 



BY LESLIE STEPHEN. 



TN his deeply interesting Romanes lecture, Prof. Huxley has 

 -L stated the opinion that the ethical progress of society depends 

 upon our combating the "cosmic process" which we call the 

 struggle for existence. Since, as he adds, we inherit the " cosmic 

 nature " which is the outcome of millions of years of severe train- 

 ing, it follows that the " ethical nature " may count upon having 

 to reckon with a tenacious and powerful enemy as long as the 

 world lasts. This is not a cheerful prospect. It is, as he admits, 

 an audacious proposal to pit the microcosm against the macrocosm. 

 We can not help fearing that the microcosm may get the worst 

 of it. Prof. Huxley has not fully expanded his meaning, and says 

 much to which I could cordially subscribe. But I think that the 

 facts upon which he relies admit or require an interpretation 

 which avoids the awkward conclusion. 



Pain and suffering, as Prof. Huxley tells us, are always with 

 us, and even increase in quantity and intensity as evolution ad- 

 vances. The fact has been recognized in remote ages long before 

 theories of evolution had taken their modern form. Pessimism, 

 from the time of the ancient Hindu philosophers to the time of 

 their disciple, Schopenhauer, has been in no want of evidence to 

 support its melancholy conclusions. It would be idle to waste 

 rhetoric in the attempt to recapitulate so familiar a position. 

 TKough I am not a pessimist, I can not doubt that there is more 

 plausibility in the doctrine than I could wish. Moreover, it may 

 be granted that any attempt to explain or to justify the existence 

 of evil is undeniably futile. It is not so much that the problem 

 can not be answered as that it can not even be asked in any intel- 

 ligible sense. To " explain " a fact is to assign its causes that is, 

 to give the preceding set of facts out of which it arose. However 

 far we might go backward, we should get no nearer to perceiving 

 any reason for the original fact. If we explain the fall of man by 

 Adam's eating the apple we are quite unable to say why the apple 

 should have been created. If we could discover a general theory 

 of pain, showing, say, that it implied certain physiological condi- 

 tions, we should be no nearer to knowing why those physiological 

 conditions should have been what they are. The existence of 

 pain, in short, is one of the primary data of our problem, not one 

 of the accidents for which we can hope in any intelligible sense to 

 account. To give any " justification " is equally impossible. The 

 book of Job really suggests an impossible, one may almost say a 

 meaningless, problem. We can give an intelligible meaning to a 

 demand for justice when we can suppose that a man has certain 



