74 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS ii 



conduct. Ethics would thus become applied 

 Natural History. In fixct, 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. There was the ' Nature ' 

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

 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 gTades of rank. 

 The logical faculty is an instrument v/hich 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, i^henomena. 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 

 supreme good and demands absolute submission of 



