398 THE FUTUEE OF RELIGION AND MORALS. 



character, others will the less ask or expect it of us, even 

 should we be disposed to make it. In this, which is no 

 invidious sense, the moral yoke of science might be de- 

 scribed as easy. But its code can never be very light so 

 long as duty is recognized, and life remains in its essence 

 what it is. 



3. So far the evolution moralist might successfully 

 defend his doctrine against objections urged. But in 

 order to do so a large faith in the future is necessary. 

 Meantime is it not a fact that there exists at the present 

 moment an irreconcilable contradiction between the new 

 teaching of science, biological and sociological, and the 

 currently accepted teaching of the moral sciences ; be- 

 tween the morality which conscience points out and 

 prescribes to us, and the actual behaviour which science 

 shows us the deepest laws of life and the necessities of 

 existence impose upon us ; between the moral law which 

 imperatively declares we ought, and the scientific law 

 which clearly shows us we must ? Is there not, too, a 

 contradiction between the moral facts within ; between 

 the fundamental instinct of self-preservation, and the 

 equally certain fact of self-sacrifice ; between the impulses 

 of pity and sympathy pleading for the mitigation of 

 others' woe, and the fact of self-assertion in the ceaseless 

 competitive struggle of life urging us to regard only our 

 own weal ? 



It must be granted that there does exist the contra- 

 diction, which is palpably and prominently brought before 

 us by the new evolution morality ; and the contradiction 

 has not been satisfactorily reconciled by any of our 

 evolution teachers, either by Darwin, Spencer,* or any 



* This chapter was written before the appearance of Mr. Spencer's 

 Data of Ethics. An attempt is there made at a conciliation of opposing 

 theories ; but the attempt is not very successful. It could not be, in 

 fact, for Mr. Spencer treats Ethics exclusively from the standpoint of 



