IX.] EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 203 



and his history." It may not be amiss then to glance 

 slightly at the question, so much disputed, concerning the 

 origin of ethical conceptions and its bearing on the theory 

 of " Natural Selection." 



The followers of Mr. John Stuart Mill; of Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer, and apparently, also, of Mr. Darwin, assert that 

 in spite of the great present difference between the ideas 

 " useful " and " right," yet that they are, nevertheless, one 

 in origin, and that that origin consisted ultimately of pleas- 

 urable and painful sensations. 



They say that " Natural Selection " has evolved moral 

 conceptions from perceptions of what was useful, i e., pleas- 

 urable, by having through long ages preserved a predomi- 

 nating number of those individuals who have had a natural 

 and spontaneous liking for practices and habits of mind 

 useful to the race, and that the same power has destroyed 

 a predominating number of those individuals who possessed 

 a marked tendency to contrary practices. The descend- 

 ants of individuals so preserved have, they say, come to 

 inherit such a liking and such useful habits of mind, and 

 that at last (finding this inherited tendency thus existing 

 in themselves, distinct from their tendency lo conscious self- 

 gratification) they have become apt to regard it as funda- 

 mentally distinct, innate, and independent of all experience. 

 In fact, according to this school, the idea of " right " is 

 only the result of the gradual accretion of useful predilec- 

 tions which, from time to time, arose in a series of ances- 

 tors naturally selected. In this way, "morality" is, as it 

 were, the congealed past experience of the race, and 

 " virtue " becomes no more than a sort of " retrieving," 

 which the thus improved human animal practises by a per- 

 fected and inherited habit, regardless of self-gratification, 

 just as the brute animal has acquired the habit of seeking 

 prey and bringing it to his master, instead of devouring it 

 himself. 



