xl INTRODUCTION. 



the other. It is there maintained that the evolutionist 

 must concede to the moral idealist that sacrifice is an 

 actual ultimate fact, as well as an eternally necessary 

 thing in life; further, that he must acknowledge the 

 reality and binding obligation of the ideals of Truth, 

 Justice, Charity, as true and not illusory lights, whose 

 meaning, as given in the impulses to them, is that they 

 should be followed, within rational bounds indeed, but 

 sometimes at all hazards. He must also concede to the 

 Kantian that there does exist somewhere a moral "ought," 

 absolutely imperative, and a duty that must be done at 

 whatever cost. But the latter, on his side, will have to 

 give up the notion that the whole complex and some- 

 times contradictory field of conduct can be reduced under 

 the all-embracing category of duty, equally obligatory 

 and equally inexorable, even when the duties are in 

 evident conflict. It will have to be given up, under 

 penalty of the whole Kantian scheme of moral legislation 

 being pushed impatiently aside, as not properly addressed 

 to men, but to a wholly different order of beings to 

 beings possessed of free-will, which assuredly cannot be 

 men ; to noumenal egos, who are not swayed by our 

 phenomenal passions and motives ; in short, to hypo- 

 thetical beings, existing nowhere on earth or in space, 

 but only in the strange sphere of Things-in-themselves, 

 or in the philosopher's imagination. 



In order to get a suitable practical ethics for men, 

 there must either be a 'further element of sacrifice, of 

 devotion, of absolute allegiance to duty, borrowed and 

 added on to the evolution ethics, that it may contain the 

 proper moral prescriptions for men in an imperfect moral 

 world, which is improved less by moral systems than by 

 individuals who manifest these qualities ; or else the 

 absolute systems must soften a little their rigid and un- 



