28 INTRODUCTION 



without excuse. After framing an indictment against 

 it in the severest language at his command, he turns 

 his back upon Nature — sub-human Nature, that is 

 — and leaves teleology to settle the score as best 

 it can. " The history of civilization," he tells us, 

 "is the record of the attempts of the human race 

 to escape from this position." But whither does 

 he betake himself? Is he not part of Nature, and 

 therefore a sharer in its guilt ? By no means. For 

 by an astonishing tour de force — the last, as his 

 former associates in the evolutionary ranks have 

 not failed to remind him, which might have been 

 expected of him — he ejects himself from the world- 

 order, and washes his hands of it in the name 

 of Ethical Man. After sharing the fortunes of 

 Evolution all his life, bearing its burdens and 

 solving its doubts, he abandons it without a pang, 

 and sets up an imperium in imperio, where, as a 

 moral being, the * cosmic ' Struggle troubles him 

 no more. " Cosmic Nature," he says, in a parting 

 shot at his former citadel, " is no school of virtue, 

 but the head-quarters of the enemy of ethical 

 nature." ^ So far from the Ascent of Man running 

 along the ancient line, " Social progress means a 

 checking of the cosmic process at every step and 

 the substitution for it of another, which may be 

 ^Evolution and Ethics^ p. 27. 



