150 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART m 



literal sense. He puts ethics and evolution as far 

 asunder as the poles. We might almost style him a 

 valuable if unexpected recruit to the cause of Miss 

 Frances Power Cobbe. 



Darwin of course he knows by heart ; and Darwin's 

 easy-going ethics felt none of his difficulties. How 

 does he answer Darwin's proposal to deduce moral- 

 ity from sociability plus intelligence ? Primarily, it 

 would seem, by emphasising justice as the moral 

 ideal rather than sympathy. Sociability might con- 

 ceivably explain the rise of sympathy, but not of a 

 sense of justice. "Wolves," he says, " could not 

 hunt in packs except for the real though unexpressed 

 understanding that they should not attack one another 

 during the chase. The most rudimentary polity is a 

 pack of men living under the like tacit or expressed 

 convention; and having made the very important 

 advance upon wolf society, that they agree to use the 

 force of the whole body against individuals who vio- 

 late it, and in favour of individuals who observe it." 

 Out of this convention arises a sense of justice, within 

 the human pack ; and justice is gradually deepened 

 into righteousness. Now certainly such a conception 

 of the moral ideal is not so easily fitted on to an 

 evolutionary process as a more purely altruistic con- 

 ception of goodness. Darwin thought sympathy or 

 comradeship the chief point in ethics. Huxley 

 swears by justice. He is tempted to call nature 

 unjust ; he is sure that it is non-just. 



Once again, in a note, he returns to this point. 

 Having by that time formulated the evil of cosmical 

 nature not simply as pain, but as competition or 

 struggle, he adverts to the fact that packs of wolves, 



