OBJECTIONS TO THE EVOLUTION ETHICS. 379 



ethical doctrine of science, so well in keeping with her 

 discoveries and inventions, resulting mainly in the mere 

 multiplication of material joys and comforts for the few. 

 A deluge of moral materialism something far more 

 serious than metaphysical materialism, which is at least 

 compatible with a high ideal life in its advocates will 

 set in, which will indefinitely postpone the happy mil- 

 lennium, promised by Herbert Spencer as the result of 

 continued natural selection ; and in the resulting moral 

 nihilism our tainted civilization, with its mere material 

 prosperity here high piled up and alongside boundless 

 want and misery, our boasted modern society, with its 

 external pomp and glitter and perfume and its internal 

 hollowness and corruption, will go down to sure and 

 deserved destruction. 



A society and a civilization with moral conviction 

 sapped, for which the eternal beacons of truth and justice 

 no longer shine as guiding or warning lights, which has 

 extinguished the illusions of faith and hope, and for 

 which even charity can scarce exist, if the evolution 

 teaching prevails; a society, in short, which will have 

 lost its soul and replaced it by its senses, must go surely 

 down to destruction and chaos, after the manner of all 

 past societies from which the inner light and life had 

 departed. It will go down as the Roman civilization, 

 morally sapped by the Epicurean, the true prototype of 

 the Evolution philosophy, went down before the vigorous 

 external barbarian, who had not tasted of the tree of 

 knowledge of good and evil as raised by Epicurus: 

 only that in the case of modern society the Goths will 

 probably be internal the toiling many in its midst, who 

 labour for the rest for small reward, but who, with all 

 their misery and vices, have yet more of the virile virtues 

 of humanity than the rich and ruling classes. 



