238 HUXLEY 



nesses, since only in the minority of all who have 

 ever lived has that advance been made, and even 

 among these there needs small provocation to arouse 

 the lightly sleeping " tiger." Hence, wherever self- 

 restraint is practised, there is checking of the cosmic 

 process of bitter struggle by the ethical, defined by 

 Huxley as the " evolution of the feelings out of which 

 the primitive bonds of human society are so largely 

 forged into the organised and personified sympathy we 

 call conscience. " l Then comes into play the golden 

 rule of Jesus, of Confucius, and of Plato : u May I 

 do to others as I would that they should do to me." 2 

 If the ethical process is not a part of the cosmical 

 process, it must have been imported, and is therefore 

 to be referred to supernatural intervention. But as 

 opposing one action against another, it has its corre- 

 spondences in man's checks upon the operation of 

 natural selection, and in the forces at play within the 

 cosmos itself. For the equilibrium towards which all 

 things in the universe are tending is arrested by the 

 activity of the conflicting agencies of repulsion and at- 

 traction ; and in all the mechanical means wherebv 

 human life is strengthened and lengthened, the action 

 of natural selection is retarded. And, as already ob- 

 served, the rudiments of ethics are found deep down 

 in the animal world. " Among birds and mammals 

 1 Coll, Essays, ix. p. 30. 2 Laws, xi. 913 (Jowett's trans.). 



