CHAP. Xiii DARWINISM IN ETHICS: ALEXANDER 135 



was a great unity throughout his career, in spite of 

 all apparent change he always disliked the middle 

 classes. Against them he appealed variously to the 

 nobles and the poor, to Tory and Radical instincts. 

 So it is to be with the typical bourgeois philosophy of 

 intuitionalism. Idealists and empiricists are to agree 

 sweetly in destroying it. Its excellent intentions shall 

 not excuse it one cruel blow, in view of its hopeless 

 and irritating limitations. 



Having affirmed so strongly the competency of 

 naturalism, Mr. Alexander has to face a question 

 which, in our judgment, presses hard upon all natu- 

 ralistic ethics. What room is there for ethics at all' 

 upon the premises of naturalism ? What do we mean' 

 by speaking of right and wrong, of moral good and 

 moral evil, in a world of blind laws and mere facts 

 and necessary processes? Mr. Alexander, like Mr. 

 Stephen, faces the question and gives the same 

 provisional answer. Primarily, we are dealing with 

 acknowledged facts, viz. with those moral judgments 

 which, as a matter of fact, are current. In the first 

 instance, therefore, Mr. Alexander takes over moral 

 opinion as he finds it, and, like Mr. Stephen, tells us 

 he is concerned to analyse it rather than to verify it 

 to systematise it, as we might perhaps interpret, 

 rather than to apply any more radical test. Self- 

 consistency is indeed a legitimate test, though but a 

 negative test of truth ; and if he had confined himself 

 to requiring that morality should be self-consistent, 

 coherent, systematic, Mr. Alexander could have done 

 no possible injustice to the moral consciousness. As 

 we read on, however, we feel that his provisional at- 

 titude is very soon departed from. The utterances 



