The Importance of Individual Variations 461 
tionism. I may, however, here refer to the book of C. M. Williams, 
A Review of the Systems of Ethics founded on the Theory of 
Evolution’, in which, besides Darwin, the following authors are 
reviewed: Wallace, Haeckel, Spencer, Fiske, Rolph, Barratt, Stephen, 
Carneri, Hoffding, Gizycki, Alexander, Rée. As works which criticise 
evolutionistic ethics from an intuitive point of view and in an 
instructive way, may be cited: Guyau, La morale anglaise contem- 
poraine’, and Sorley, Ethics of Naturalism. I will only mention 
some interesting contributions to ethical discussion which can be 
found in Darwinism besides the idea of struggle for life. 
The attention which Darwin has directed to variations has 
opened our eyes to the differences in human nature as well as in 
nature generally. There is here a fact of great importance for 
ethical thought, no matter from what ultimate premiss it starts. 
Only from a very abstract point of view can different individuals be 
treated in the same manner. The most eminent ethical thinkers, men 
such as Jeremy Bentham and Immanuel Kant, who discussed ethical 
questions from very opposite standpoints, agreed in regarding all men 
as equal in respect of ethical endowment. In regard to Bentham, 
Leslie Stephen remarks: “He is determined to be thoroughly 
empirical, to take men as he found them. But his utilitarianism 
supposed that men’s views of happiness and utility were uniform and 
clear, and that all that was wanted was to show them the means by 
which their ends could be reached*.” And Kant supposed that every 
man would find the “categorical imperative” in his consciousness, 
when he came to sober reflexion, and that all would have the same 
qualifications to follow it. But if continual variations, great or small, 
are going on in human nature, it is the duty of ethics to make 
allowance for them, both in making claims, and in valuing what is done. 
A new set of ethical problems have their origin here*. It is an 
interesting fact that Stuart Mill’s book On Liberty appeared in the 
same year as The Origin of Species. Though Mill agreed with 
Bentham about the original equality of all men’s endowments, he 
regarded individual differences as a necessary result of physical and 
social influences, and he claimed that free play shall be allowed 
to differences of character so far as is possible without injury to 
other men. It is a condition of individual and social progress that 
a man’s mode of action should be determined by his own character 
and not by tradition and custom, nor by abstract rules. This view 
was to be corroborated by the theory of Darwin. 
But here we have reached a point of view from which the 
1 New York and London, 1893. 2 Paris, 1879. 
3 English literature and society in the eighteenth century, London, 1904, p. 187. 
4 Cf. my paper, “The law of relativity in Ethics,” International Journal of Ethics, Vol. 1. 
1891, pp. 37—62. 
