276 Evolution of Morals. 



his nature. " All human actions," he says, " are determined 

 according to the order of Nature by the empirical character 

 and the co-operating conditions." From a knowledge of 

 these, he admits, "they might be foretold with certainty, 

 and necessarily deduced." He thus practically recognizes 

 the operation of cause and effect in human action. The 

 conception of the will as an entity, apart from and superior 

 to the mental faculties, has no foundation, however, in the 

 observed phenomena of mind which constitute the data of 

 mental and moral science. Moreover, as the sanctions of 

 evolutionary ethics inhere in the nature of things, they 

 operate on all minds, irrespective of their theoretical judg- 

 ments. Hence, the importance of belief in the freedom of 

 the will seems to be greatly over-estimated by its advocates. 

 The will, as defined and recognized by the new ethics, is 

 an inseparable element in all conscious adaptations of acts 

 to ends. "Will, or volition," says Bain," "comprises all 

 the actions of human beings, in so far as guided by feel- 

 ings." * " Volition," says John Fiske, more tersely, " is 

 the process whereby feeling initiates action. * * The will 

 is not an entity, but a dynamic process." f It is therefore, 

 as Dr. Eccles has pointed out, an element not only in human 

 conduct, but in the conscious activities of all sentient 

 creatures — even the lowest. Human volition, in all sane 

 minds, is determined by rational and ascertainable motives ; 

 and herein lie the chief means and incentives to man's 

 moral regeneration. A new thought projected into the 

 mind, a new point of view held up as a mirror in which 

 man may regard the tendencies and results of his actions, 

 may become the all-powerful motive leading to a revolution 

 of conduct. All our educational systems, all wise penal and 

 reformatory methods, are based upon the belief that normally 

 constituted minds will inevitably respond to certain motives 

 by corresponding and predicable lines of action. Nature 

 herself, indeed, appears to have acted in accordance with 

 this understanding, throughout the entire course of moral 

 evolution ; and thus man has been led onward and upward 

 out of brute-egoism toward the ideal of a perfect manhood. 

 Man but endeavors, in the range of the moral activities, to 

 substitute for the slow process of natural selection, the 

 quicker appeal to intelligent selection by means of legisla- 

 tive enactments, education, and volitional effort. In the 



* Bain's Moral Science. tFiske's Cosmic Philosophy. 



