228 HUXLEY 



wrong-doing is held, under the doctrine of evolution, 

 to be an infraction of human law. 



The actions we call sinful are as much the conse- 

 quence of the order of nature as those we call virtu- 

 ous. They are all part and parcel of the struggle for 

 existence through which all living things have passed, 

 and they have become sins because man alone seeks a 

 higher life in voluntary association. 1 



We are in ignorance alike as to the beginnings of 

 consciousness and the beginnings of ethics. But as 

 we trace the evolution of the nervous system from 

 irritability in the lowest organisms to sensibility in its 

 ever-increasing complexity, till the higher we ascend 

 the more acute do we find the feelings associated with 

 pain and pleasure, so it is permissible to trace the 

 germs of morality, which lie in sympathy, among the 

 social animals. Into the marvels of their organisa- 

 tion, perhaps more astounding among invertebrates, 

 as ants and bees, than among the higher gregarious 

 mammals, there is neither need nor space to enter here ; 

 enough that the links in the chain of psychical life of 

 man and the creatures beneath him are unbroken. 

 Moreover, the evidences as to the social bases of 

 ethics are contained in human history. 2 The terms 



i II. 282. 



2 To whatever extent Mr. Balfour may draw untenable inferences 

 from such premises, the admission made in the new edition of 

 his Foundations of Belief is significant. He says that " study of 



