CHAP, xni DARWINISM IN ETHICS : ALEXANDER 147 



guage ; but if such language were meant in full 

 earnest it would be necessary to cease speaking of 

 the limitlessness or indefiniteness of moral change. 

 We may be baffled and bewildered by the course 

 of moral evolution. Many a time good but timid 

 men have regarded change and even advance in 

 moral conduct or ideas as pure wanton iconoclasm. 

 But it was not so ; it was inwardly continuous with 

 what went before. And, although philosophy itself 

 must fail if it seeks to forecast the morality of a dis- 

 tant future, yet the future form will grow out of the 

 present, and, when it comes, men will see in it once 

 more how wisely and how surely God fulfils Himself. 

 To abandon that hope is to abandon morality and all 

 that makes us human. 



