V.

To many people the Darwinian theory of natural selection or struggle

for existence seemed to change the whole conception of life, and

particularly all the conditions on which the validity of ethical ideas

depends. If only that has persistence which can be adapted to a given

condition, what will then be the fate of our ideals, of our standards

of good and evil? Blind force seems to reign, and the only thing that

counts seems to be the most heedless use of power. Darwinism, it was

said, has proclaimed brutality. No other difference seems permanent save

that between the sound, powerful and happy on the one side, the sick,

feeble and unhappy on the other; and every attempt to alleviate this

difference seems to lead to general enervation. Some of those who

interpreted Darwinism in this manner felt an aesthetic delight in

contemplating the heedlessness and energy of the great struggle for

existence and anticipated the realisation of a higher human type as the

outcome of it: so Nietzsche and his followers. Others recognising the

same consequences in Darwinism regarded these as one of the strongest

objections against it; so Duhring and Kropotkin (in his earlier works).

This interpretation of Darwinism was frequent in the interval between

the two main works of Darwin--"The Origin of Species" and "The Descent

of Man". But even during this interval it was evident to an attentive

reader that Darwin himself did not found his standard of good and evil

on the features of the life of nature he had emphasised so strongly. He

did not justify the ways along which nature reached its ends; he only

pointed them out. The "real" was not to him, as to Hegel, one with

the "rational." Darwin has, indeed, by his whole conception of nature,

rendered a great service to ethics in making the difference between the

life of nature and the ethical life appear in so strong a light. The

ethical problem could now be stated in a sharper form than before. But

this was not the first time that the idea of the struggle for life

was put in relation to the ethical problem. In the seventeenth century

Thomas Hobbes gave the first impulse to the whole modern discussion of

ethical principles in his theory of bellum omnium contra omnes. Men, he

taught, are in the state of nature enemies one of another, and they live

either in fright or in the glory of power. But it was not the opinion

of Hobbes that this made ethics impossible. On the contrary, he found a

standard for virtue and vice in the fact that some qualities and actions

have a tendency to bring us out of the state of war and to secure

peace, while other qualities have a contrary tendency. In the eighteenth

century even Immanuel Kant's ideal ethics had--so far as can be seen--a

similar origin. Shortly before the foundation of his definitive ethics,

Kant wrote his "Idee zu einer allgemeinen Weltgeschichte" (1784),

where--in a way which reminds us of Hobbes, and is prophetic of

Darwin--he describes the forward-driving power of struggle in the human

world. It is here as with the struggle of the trees for light and air,

through which they compete with one another in height. Anxiety about

war can only be allayed by an ordinance which gives everyone his full

liberty under acknowledgment of the equal liberty of others. And such

ordinance and acknowledgment are also attributes of the content of the

moral law, as Kant proclaimed it in the year after the publication

of his essay (1785) (Cf. my "History of Modern Philosophy" (English

translation London, 1900), I. pages 76-79.) Kant really came to his

ethics by the way of evolution, though he afterwards disavowed it.

Similarly the same line of thought may be traced in Hegel though it has

been disguised in the form of speculative dialectics. ("Herrschaft und

Knechtschaft", "Phanomenologie des Geistes", IV. A., Leiden, 1907.) And

in Schopenhauer's theory of the blind will to live and its abrogation by

the ethical feeling, which is founded on universal sympathy, we have a

more individualistic form of the same idea.

It was, then, not entirely a foreign point of view which Darwin

introduced into ethical thought, even if we take no account of the

poetical character of the word "struggle" and of the more direct

adaptation, through the use and non-use of power, which Darwin also

emphasised. In "The Descent of Man" he has devoted a special chapter

("The Descent of Man", Vol. I. Ch. iii.) to a discussion of the origin

of the ethical consciousness. The characteristic expression of this

consciousness he found, just as Kant did, in the idea of "ought"; it was

the origin of this new idea which should be explained. His hypothesis

was that the ethical "ought" has its origin in the social and parental

instincts, which, as well as other instincts (e.g. the instinct of

self-preservation), lie deeper than pleasure and pain. In many species,

not least in the human species, these instincts are fostered by natural

selection; and when the powers of memory and comparison are developed,

so that single acts can be valued according to the claims of the deep

social instinct, then consciousness of duty and remorse are possible.

Blind instinct has developed to conscious ethical will.

As already stated, Darwin, as a moral philosopher belongs to the school

that was founded by Shaftesbury, and was afterwards represented by

Hutcheson, Hume, Adam Smith, Comte and Spencer. His merit is, first,

that he has given this tendency of thought a biological foundation, and

that he has stamped on it a doughty character in showing that ethical

ideas and sentiments, rightly conceived, are forces which are at work in

the struggle for life.

There are still many questions to solve. Not only does the ethical

development within the human species contain features still unexplained

(The works of Westermarck and Hobhouse throw new light on many of these

features.); but we are confronted by the great problem whether after all

a genetic historical theory can be of decisive importance here. To

every consequent ethical consciousness there is a standard of value, a

primordial value which determines the single ethical judgments as their

last presupposition, and the "rightness" of this basis, the "value"

of this value can as little be discussed as the "rationality" of our

logical principles. There is here revealed a possibility of ethical

scepticism which evolutionistic ethics (as well as intuitive or

rationalistic ethics) has overlooked. No demonstration can show that the

results of the ethical development are definitive and universal. We

meet here again with the important opposition of systematisation and

evolution. There will, I think, always be an open question here, though

comparative ethics, of which we have so far only the first attempts, can

do much to throw light on it.

It would carry us too far to discuss all the philosophical works

on ethics, which have been influenced directly or indirectly by

evolutionism. 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"

(New York and London, 1893.), in which, besides Darwin, the following

authors are reviewed: Wallace, Haeckel, Spencer, Fiske, Rolph, Barratt,

Stephen, Carneri, Hoffding, Gizycki, Alexander, Ree. As works which

criticise evolutionistic ethics from an intuitive point of view and

in an instructive way, may be cited: Guyau "La morale anglaise

contemporaine" (Paris, 1879.), 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." ("English literature and society in the eighteenth

century", London, 1904, page 187.) 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. (Cf. my paper, "The law of relativity

in Ethics," "International Journal of Ethics", Vol. I. 1891, pages

37-62.) 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 criticism,

which in recent years has often been directed against Darwin--that

small variations are of no importance in the struggle for life--is of

no weight. From an ethical standpoint, and particularly from the

ethical standpoint of Darwin himself, it is a duty to foster individual

differences that can be valuable, even though they can neither be of

service for physical preservation nor be physically inherited. The

distinction between variation and mutation is here without importance.

It is quite natural that biologists should be particularly interested in

such variations as can be inherited and produce new species. But in the

human world there is not only a physical, but also a mental and social

heredity. When an ideal human character has taken form, then there

is shaped a type, which through imitation and influence can become an

important factor in subsequent development, even if it cannot form a

species in the biological sense of the word. Spiritually strong

men often succumb in the physical struggle for life; but they can

nevertheless be victorious through the typical influence they exert,

perhaps on very distant generations, if the remembrance of them is kept

alive, be it in legendary or in historical form. Their very failure

can show that a type has taken form which is maintained at all risks,

a standard of life which is adhered to in spite of the strongest

opposition. The question "to be or not to be" can be put from

very different levels of being: it has too often been considered a

consequence of Darwinism that this question is only to be put from

the lowest level. When a stage is reached, where ideal (ethical,

intellectual, aesthetic) interests are concerned, the struggle for life

is a struggle for the preservation of this stage. The giving up of a

higher standard of life is a sort of death; for there is not only a

physical, there is also a spiritual, death.