OBJECTIONS TO THE EVOLUTION ETHICS. 373 



been, in the course of countless generations, gradually 

 superinduced on the original selfish root ; even if the self- 

 regarding sentiments were slowly transmuted by a moral 

 and physiological chemistry, itself not explained, into the 

 unselfish sentiments ; still these last principles can find, 

 on this evolution theory, no adequate justification for 

 their action, should they come in collision with the self- 

 regarding principles in us. Why should we follow dis- 

 interested principles against our clear self-interest, the 

 first of obligations, on the evolution theory of life as a 

 ceaseless competitive fight ? It is not open to the 

 evolutionists, as it was to the benevolence moralists, to 

 say we follow them because we derive greater pleasure 

 and satisfaction from them. And when a collision arises, 

 such as must constantly happen, between the self-asserting 

 and the self-forgetting impulses, between our supposed 

 interest and conscience, why may we not deny the 

 authority of Conscience, that can only show such question- 

 able credentials of her claims to rule as a mere inherited 

 tendency amounts to ? For this fact of inherited tendency 

 is all that Darwin and Spencer give us on which to found 

 the right of conscience to be the ruler of our actions. 

 True, indeed, Spencer allows that conscience should rule, 

 but the difficulty is, with the utilitarian origin and 

 the utilitarian final end, and with the conception of life 

 as in some sort always a competitive struggle, to establish 

 any valid and incontestable claim to rule'. It is ruler de 

 facto, he allows ; how it is ruler de jure is not explained ; 

 and should we feel inclined to shake off its yoke, to deny 

 that a divine right can come from the fact of inherited 

 tendency, there seems no real reason why the rule of 

 conscience might not be disputed in theory as well as 

 disallowed in fact. The pretension, in short, might be 

 denied as a usurped authority. 



