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LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xviii 



I hear much of the " ethics of evolution." I apprehend that, 

 in the broadest sense of the term " evolution," there neither is, 

 nor can be, any such thing. The notion that the doctrine of 

 evolution can furnish a foundation for morals seems to me to 

 be an illusion which has arisen from the unfortunate ambiguity 

 of the term " fittest " in the formula, " survival of the fittest." 

 We commonly use " fittest " in a good sense, with an understood 

 connotation of " best " ; and " best " we are apt to take in its 

 ethical sense. But the " fittest " which survives in the struggle 

 for existence may be, and often is, the ethically worst. 



Another paragraph explains the sense in which he used 

 to say that the Romanes Lecture was a very orthodox dis- 

 course on the text, " Satan, the Prince of this world " : — 



It is the secret of the superiority of the best theological 

 teachers to the majority of their opponents that they substan- 

 tially recognise these realities of things, however strange the 

 forms in which they clothe their conceptions. The doctrines of 

 predestination, of original sin, of the innate depravity of man 

 and the evil fate of the greater part of the race, of the primacy 

 of Satan in this world, of the essential vileness of matter, of a 

 malevolent Demiurgus subordinate to a benevolent Almighty, 

 who has only lately revealed himself, faulty as they are, appear 

 to me to be vastly nearer the truth than the " liberal " popular 

 illusions that babies are all born good, and that the example of 

 a corrupt society is responsible for their failure to remain so ; 

 that it is given to everybody to reach the ethical ideal if he will 

 only try ; that all partial evil is universal good, and other opti- 

 mistic figments, such as that which represents " Providence " 

 under the guise of a paternal philanthropist, and bids us believe 

 that everything will come right (according to our notions) at 

 last. 



As to " Immortality " again [he refers his critic to his book 

 on " Hume "] I do not think I need return to " subjective " 

 immortality, but it may be well to add that I am a very strong 

 believer in the punishment of certain kinds of actions, not only 

 in the present, but in all the future a man can have, be it long 

 or short. Therefore in hell, for I suppose that all men with a 

 clear sense of right and wrong (and I am not sure that any 

 others deserve such punishment) have now and then '' de- 

 scended into hell " and stopped there quite long enough to know 

 what infinite punishment means. And if a genuine, not merely 

 subjective, immortality awaits us, I conceive that, without some 



