42 THE LESSON OF EVOLUTION 



believe that this millennium was the final purpose of 

 terrestrial evolution, however inadequate it may appear 

 to be. But there is no evidence of a millennium, even 

 in the very far distance. So long as man exists, 

 ethical and intellectual evolution will both be going 

 on, and they will always be in antagonism. The 

 struggle for wealth and power will never cease, and 

 while it continues there can be no millennium. The 

 wolf will live as long as the lamb, and the two will 

 never lie down together. So we must look elsewhere 

 for the object of evolution. 



Indeed, psychological evolution is not making 

 towards happiness. Birds and other animals are as 

 happy as man. Civilised man cannot boast that he is 

 happier than the savage. The greatest happiness of 

 the greatest number may be the ideal of the politician, 

 but it has never been the ideal of the moralist. With 

 him happiness may come as an adjunct, but it cannot 

 be a prime motive for action. His ideal is duty. 

 Consequently, ethical evolution seems to be leading up 

 to something which is not displayed on the earth, and 

 which we can only conceive as a further development 

 of psychological evolution when mind is freer from 

 matter. 



It will be objected that we cannot even imagine a 

 spiritual life unconnected with any material substance. 

 That is quite true, but it proves nothing. As I have 

 just said, we know that physical evolution prepared 

 the way for life, and that biological evolution prepared 

 the way for the development of mind. In each case 

 the evolution had a prospective purpose, which could 

 not have been predicted by an intelligent onlooker. 

 Indeed, the intelligent onlooker might have been 



