II EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 53 



methods of the struggle for existence are not 

 reconcilable with sound ethical principles. 



The hero of our story descended the bean-stalk, 

 and came back to the common world, where fare 

 and work were alike hard ; where ugly competitors 

 were much commoner than beautiful princesses ; 

 and where the everlasting battle with self was 

 much less sure to be crowned with victory than a 

 turn-to with a giant. We have done the like. 

 Thousands upon thousands of our fellows, thou- 

 sands of years ago, have preceded us in finding 

 themselves face to face with the same dread prob- 

 lem of evil. They also have seen that the cosmic 

 process is evolution ; that it is full of wonder, full 

 of beauty, and, at the same time, full of pain. 

 They have sought to discover the bearing of these 

 great facts on ethics ; to find out whether there 

 is, or is not, a sanction for morality in the ways of 

 the cosmos. 



Theories of the universe, in which the conception 

 of evolution plays a leading part, were extant at 

 least six centuries before our era. Certain know- 

 ledge of them, in the fifth century, reaches us 

 from localities as distant as the valley of the 

 Ganges and the Asiatic coasts of the ^gean. To 

 the early philosophers of Hindostan, no less than 

 to those of Ionia, the salient and characteristic 

 feature of the phenomenal world was its change- 



