CHAP, xv REACTION FROM DARWINISM : DRUMMOND 1 59 



is, in its own opinion, its most important feature. Let 

 us look then for a moment at the peculiarities of 

 Darwinism. All living species have been marked off 

 from each other, and given a standing ground in 

 nature, by the working of natural selection upon 

 minute and apparently casual variations. The means 

 of selection has been the ceaseless process of struggle 

 for existence. At a certain point in this evolutionary 

 process we have foreshadowings of morality when 

 gregariousness appears, and when social sympathies 

 begin to claim a place in animal life. Such limitation 

 of the struggle for existence marks the dawn of 

 morality. Henceforth sociality has only to develop 

 its latent powers, and to call in the strong help of 

 intelligence, and we have morality full blown. How- 

 ever, the struggle for existence is not terminated; it is 

 only limited or modified. Competition does not go 

 on within the social group ; " dog does not bite dog ; " 

 but the groups still compete with each other. Moral- 

 ity and immorality are both of them natural products. 

 Evolution yields them both ; they are both with us to 

 this day in the strangest blending. Darwin, being 

 neither philosopher, nor moralist, but a student of 

 facts and a seeker of natural laws, was content to 

 publish his views of origin and process without in- 

 quiring very deeply into the probable consequences 

 of such views in their bearing upon morality. 



The first objection taken was by Miss Cobbe, speak- 

 ing as an intuitionalist. She complained that moral- 

 ity had no more sacredness, no more binding force, if 

 it were true that conscience was a simple remainder 

 of brute tendencies, useful to the species, but having 

 no ideal sanction. That objection we have ventured 



