EVOLUTION IN PROFESSOR HUXLEY. 327 



We read also : 



Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step, and the 

 substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process. It de- 

 pends (he tells us on the next page) not on imitating the cosmic process, still less 

 in running away from it, but in combating it. 



It is yet further said : * 



The history of civilization details the steps by which men have succeeded in 

 building up an artificial world within the Cosmos. Fragile reed as he may be, 

 man, as Pascal says, is a thinking reed : there lies within him a fnnd of energy, 

 operating intelligently, and so far akin to that which pervades the universe that 

 it is competent to influence and modify the cosmic process. 



I have always maintained that the cosmic process, since it 

 often favors the ill-doer more than the virtuous man, could 

 never by any possibility have evolved the ethical ideal. 



Prof. Huxley now bears the most satisfactory witness to this 

 truth, saying : f 



The thief and the murderer follow Nature just as much as the philanthropist. 

 Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and evil tendencies of man may 

 have come about ; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason 

 why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before. 



Just so! It would be difficult to declare more emphatically 

 that ethics could never have formed part and parcel of the general 

 process of evolution. 



But with that change, whatever it may have been, which first 

 introduced into this planet an intellectual, and therefore ethical, 

 nature, it is no wonder that consequences thence resulted de- 

 structive of antecedent harmonies. 



Many persons deplore the ravages which the one intellectual 

 animal (man) has effected on the fair face of Nature. As a natu- 

 ralist I feel this strongly, and the extinction of so many curious 

 and beautiful forms of life which human progress occasions is 

 very painful to contemplate. It seems to us hateful that the 

 harmonious results of Nature's conflicting powers should be dis- 

 turbed and upset to meet the vulgar needs of uncultured human 

 life. 



Yet reason should convince us that this sentiment is a mis- 

 taken one. We may, indeed, most reasonably regret the loss of 

 species of animals and plants which greater care and foresight 

 might have preserved ; yet we should never forget that over the 

 irrational world man legitimately holds sway, and that weighed 

 in the balance with him the rest counts for nothing. The very 

 poorest homestead, the ugliest row of cottages, the most common- 



* [December Monthly, pp. 189, 190.] 



f [December Monthly, p. 187.J The Italics are mine. 



