n EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 75 



which commands all men to love one another, to 

 return good for evil, to regard one another as fel- 

 low-citizens of one great state. Indeed, seeing 

 that the progress towards perfection of a civilized 

 state, or polity, depends on the obedience of its 

 members to these commands, the Stoics sometimes 

 termed the pure reason the " political " nature. 

 Unfortunately, the sense of the adjective has un- 

 dergone so much modification, that the application 

 of it to that which commands the sacrifice of self 

 to the common good would now sound almost gro- 

 tesque.^^ 



But what part is played by the theory of evolu- 

 tion in this view of ethics? So far as I can 

 discern, the ethical system of the Stoics, which is 

 essentially intuitive, and reverences the categorical 

 imperative as strongly as that of any later 

 moralists, might have been just what it was if they 

 had held any other theory; whether that of special 

 creation, on the one side, or that of the eternal 

 existence of the present order, on the other.^* To 

 the Stoic, the cosmos had no importance for the 

 conscience, except in so far as he chose to think 

 it a pedagogue to virtue. The pertinacious opti- 

 mism of our philosophers hid from them the actual 

 state of the case. It prevented them from seeing 

 that cosmic nature is no school of virtue, but the 

 headquarters of the enemy of ethical nature. 

 The logic of facts was necessary to convince them 



