70 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS ii 



their attention upon ethical problems. Forsaking 

 the study of the macrocosm for that of the micro- 

 cosm, they lost the key to the thought of the 

 great Ephesian, which, I imagine, is more intelli- 

 gible to us than it ^vas to Socrates, or to Plato. 

 Socrates, more especially, set the fashion of a kind 

 of inverse agnosticism, by teaching that the prob- 

 lems of i^hysics lie beyond the reach of the 

 human intellect ; that the attempt to solve them 

 is essentially vain ; that the one worthy object of 

 investigation is the problem of ethical life ; and 

 his example was followed by the Cynics and the 

 later Stoics. Even the comprehensive knowledge 

 and the ^penetrating intellect of Aristotle failed to 

 suggest to him that in holding the eternity of the 

 world, within its present range of mutation, he was 

 making a retrogressive step. The scientific herit- 

 age of Heracleitus passed into the hands neither 

 of Plato nor of Aristotle, but into those of Demo- 

 critus. But the world was not yet ready to 

 receive the great conceptions of the pliilosojDher of 

 Abdera. It was reserved for the Stoics to return 

 to the track marked out by the earlier philo- 

 sophers ; and, professing themselves disciples of 

 Heracleitus, to develop the idea of evolution 

 systematically. In doing this, they not only 

 omitted some characteristic features of their 

 master's teaching, but they made additions al- 

 together foreign to it. One of the most influ- 

 ential ol' these importations was the transcen- 



