74 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 



r 

 P. 



Conduct. Ethics would thus become applied 

 Natural History. In fact, a confused employment 

 of the maxim, in this sense, has done immeasur- 

 able mischief in later times. It has furnished an 

 axiomatic foundation for the philosophy of philo- 

 sophasters 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. Th^ra wig t.V>p. * Np.fr ""ft ' 

 of the cosmos and the ' Nature ' of man. In the 

 kA \\ j 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 instrument 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 patho- 

 logical, rather than normal, phenomena. The one 

 supreme, hegemonic, faculty, which constitutes the 

 essential ' nature ' of man, is most nearly repre- 

 sented by that which, in the language of a later 

 philosophy, has been called the pure reason. It is 

 ^ /this 'nature' which holds up the ideal of the 

 y\ supreme good and demands absolute submission of 



