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Tous les autres exemplalres originaux sent filmte en commandant par la premiere page q?ii comporte une empreinte d'impresiion ou d'Mlustration ot en terminant par la derni'ire page qui comporte une celle empreinte. Un des symboies suivants apparaltra sur la derniire image de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: le symbols — ► signifie "A SUIVRE ", le symbols V signifie "FIN". Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent §tre film6s A des taux de raduction diffdrentv. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour Atre reproduit en un seul ciichA, 11 est filmd a partir de Tangle supirieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images nAcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 The Ethical Impoet OF DARWINISM The Ethical Import OF DARWINISM BY JACOB GOULD SCHUEMAN M.A. (Lona.). D.Sc. lEdtnb.) 8A0B PBOFESBOR OP PHIL080PHT IN CORNELL ONrVBRSITT NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1887 COPTRIOHT. 1S87. BT CHARLES SCBIBNBR'S SONS 4^Q>01 TROWa PniNTINO AND lOOKMNmNa COMPANY, NEW YORK. JAMES MARTINEAU, D.D., LL.D., THB BTHIOAL AND BBtlOIOCS HBLPHB OP TWO OENBIUinOMBk THIS STVDT OF BTOLTmONABT MOBALS IS INSOBIBBD WITH THB OBATITOBB AND BBTBBBNT AFFEOTIOM OF AN OLD PUPIL PREFACE. There is a remark of Mrs. Carlyle's which has always seemed to me highly suggestive. When asked to explain her manifest antipathy to Bishop Colenso, whom Mr. Fronde had got invited to one of her tea-parties, she confessed that it arose in part from the ancmalons appearance presented by "a man arrived at the years of discretion wearing an absurd little black-silk apron," and in part from the incongruity between that ecclesias- tical symbol and this particular bishop's " arith- metical confutation of the Bible ; " for, proceeds the philosophical lady, generalizing the causes of lier unfavorable impressions, " it is the mixing up of things which is the Great Bad. " In what passes with us for the doctrine of evo- lution there is a mixture of science and specula- tion. Yet it is customary to serve it all up to- gether, so that the hungry soul must needs take all or none. The result for many minds is apt to be indigestion or starvation. But this cruel di- • • • VUl Preface, leiijiiia might be escaped, if the fact and the fancy entering into current evolutionism were kept apart and dealt ont separately. The mind's nat- ural craving for knowledge conld then be satisfied without detriment ; for it is only when science is adulterated with nescience that it becomes un- wholesome and poisonous. The object of the present volume is to distin- guish between science and speculation in the ap- plication of Darwinism to morals. The results of evolutionary science in the domain of matter and in the domain of life are everywhere taken for granted; the philosophical and, more espe- cially, the ethical t'lieories currently associated with them are subjected to the most searching scrutiny I have been able to make. As it has been pre- tended that the doctrine of evolution invests ethics with a new scientiJiG character, I first ex- amine the various methods of ethics and attempt to determine under what conditions alone ethics can become a science- {This first chapter should he omitted hy the general reader not interested in the logic of ethics.) Whether Darwinian ethics is a piece of science or of speculation appears in the sequel. But before the question is decided we must know what is meant by Darwinism. Accordingly, the second diapter gives an exposi- Preface, IX tion of the Darwinian theory, comparing and contrasting it with the more general doctrine of evohitionism, whose history and meaning are a1«o briefly traced. Tlien follow chapters on the phil- osophical intei*pretation and the ethical bearings of Darwinism. The fifth chapter is devoted to an examination of the ethical speculations which Darwin grafted npon his biological science. These chapters confirming thoconclnsion reached in the first chapter, that a aoientificy as opposed to a speculative, etliic can be constmcted only by adopting the historical method, the last chapter has to show what light may be thrown upon ethi- cal problems by tracing the actual development of moral ideals and institutions, of which, for ob- vious reasons, the domestic virtues are hei'e taken as typical illustration. The work is primarily the outcome of my own reflective needs. It has cleared up in my own mind the confusion between guesses and facts, which is " the Great Bad " in evolutionary ethics. I am not without hope that it may also prove clarifying to other minds. Kot, of course, that I would presume to instruct trained philosophical experts; but I have in view the increasingly large number of intelligent men and women who, without making a special study of philosophy, I i X Preface. would fain comprehend the significance for morals of that evohitionarj theory which has revolutionized modern science and culture. This alone would have been sufficient motive for the avoidance of obscure and technical phraseology and the cultivation of a popular style ; but, apart from that consideration, I hold that the first duty of any philosophical writer is to make himself generally intelligible, and I am of the opinion that there is no theory, or criticism, or system (not even Kant's or Hegel's), that cannot be clearly expressed in a language which in Locke's hands was strong and homely, in Berkeley's rich and subtle, in Hume's easy, graceful, and finished, and in all three alike plain, transparent, and un- mistakable. This study of Darwinism in ethics being so largely of a reflective character, reference to other works has not in general been considered necessary. I wish here, however, to acknowledge especially my indebtedness to Darwin, whose ethical speculations, illusory as I now hold them, I have found more stimulating than any other similar work since the time of Kant. J. G. S. CORNBLL Univebsitt, August 22, 1887. i CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. METHODS OP ETHICS, EVOLUTIONARY AND OTHEii. Diversity of Ethical Theories— Need of a Critique of Ethics as a Science — Is Ethics a Science of the same Type as Logic ? It has not in general been so regarded— Locke's Conception of Ethics as a Demonstrative Science, like Mathematics, rests on a Misunderstanding of the Procedure of Mathe- matics, and it assumes, besides, Theological First Principles — Ethics as a Natural Science — Spen- cer's Reconstruction of Ethics on the Law of Uni- versal Causation, after the Model of Astronomy, an Illusion — Is Ethics, then, if not a Deductive, at least an Empirical, Physical Science ? — Its Limita- tions in Comparison with Biology — ^Ethics, as a Science, is a Branch of History — ^What passes for the " Science of Ethics " is a Medley of Specula- tions— The Highly Speculative Character of Cur- rent Naturalistic, Evoiutioaary Ethics — An Under- standing with Darwinism the Preliminary to a True Science of Historical Ethics — Transition to Examination of Darwinism in fithios, • • PAOK CHAPTER II. EVOLUTIONISM AND DARWINISM. "The Origin of Species "—Popular View of Darwin- ism—Antiquity of the Conception of Evolution— xii Contents. Firfi Pointg of the Modern Theory anticipated by the Greeks —Introduction of the Notion of EtoIu- tion into Modern Science by Kant, Goethe, EraH- aus Darwin, Saint Hilaire, Lamarck, and Lyell — The Problem of Darwin — Importance of hia Ob- servations on the Formation of Domestic Breeds by Man's Conscious Selection — Natural 'Election suggested by Malthus's Essay — Fecundity of Or- ganisms—Struggle for Life— Survival of Favored Individuals begins the Formation of Species — Man's Relation to the Apes — Darwinism distin- guished from Evolutionism — How regarded by Ilelmholtz, Virchow, Wallace, and Huxley — Net Result — Significance for Ethics — Dread of Science an Anachronism, ..... PAoa 40 CHAPTER III. THE PHILOSOPHICAL INTEKPKETATION OP THE DABWU?- IAN HYPOTHKSI8. Darwin gives a Scientific Explanation of the Origin of Species — Need of a Philosophical Analysis of that Explanation — Significance of the Variations on which Natural Selection works — They originate, ultimately, in the Nature of the Organism — ^They are Indefinite, according to Darwin, but the Theory of Natural Selection does not require that View, which is not shared by Huxley and Asa Gray — Natural Selection is th'> Scientific Account of the Accumulation of Favorable Variations into Specific Characters, but the Phrase is apt to mis- lead through Metaphorical Associations — Specula- tive License of the Darwinists — What is explained and what is still left a Mystery by Natural Selec- tion — Human and Natural Selection dependent npon Transcendent Causation— Parwiu's Pro- Contents, Xlll fessed Theism— His Heohanioal Philosophy — Teleology and Darwinism— Evolutionism for> merly Teleologioal— Has the Instinct of the Cuckoo a Fortuitous Origin ?— Natural .J'b:'»ction, not a Creative, hut a Sifting Process— Does not explain the Fbrmation of the Eye— Variations being predetermined imply Teleology— Fortuity an Accident in Darwinism, . PAOB 74 CHAPTER IV. DARWINISM AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF MORALS. The Problem— The Moment of Utility in Natural Se- lection—The Utility of Intelligenop and Morality — Evolutionary Biology leads to Utilitarian Ethics — ^Utilitarianism Old and New — ^Evolutiono util- itarianism explains the Innateness, Simplicity, Universality, and Obligation of Moral Laws — What Evolutiono-utilitariauism assumes : flratf the Derivative Character of Morality; secondly^ the Ultimateness of Pleasure or some other End ; thirdlyy the Fortuitous Origin of Morality through a Procers purely Mechanical — Man an Automaton, with Intelligence and Conscience as Accidents —Speculative Objections — Practical Ob- jections drawn from our Sense of Duty and Right — But this Sense explained away by Spencer and Guyau — Fallacy in their Theory of its Origin and Future Decline — Mechanical Metaphysics, not Evolutionary Science, their Basis— Darwinism compatible with a Non-mechanical and Non-for- tuitous Theory of Conscience — involution not ^«volntion — Conscience compared with the Eye and with the Intellect — AH Useful because they reveal Facts, but not therefore mere Utilities, ...... 116 I'M i If! xiv Contents, CHAPTER V. THE ETHICAL SPECULATIONS OF DARWIN. Darwin^s Difficulty with Intelligence and Conscience — Probability of their Evolution— Conxparison of Human and Animal Instincts, Emotions, Intellect- ual Powers, Progressiveness, Skill, and Speech — Conscience a Greater Barrier — Origin of Con- science — Animal Sociability — The Social Instincts being more present and persistent than the Self- ish, if violated, generate under Reflection the Feeling of Remorse, or Conscience — Darwin's Treatment of Conscience compared with his Treatment of Life and Mind : that Speculative, this Scientific — Possible Objection to his Mental Science ; Insuperable Objection to his Ethics — In- conceivability of an absolute beginning of Con- science — Darwin takes Intelligence and (in his Theory of Sexual Selection) the Esthetic Faculty Ready-made : only of Conscience does he venture the Creation— Ambiguity in his use of "Con- science," and the consequent Perplexity — Con- science identified with Remorse — How the Theory fails to account for even thh Conscience — For the Social Instincts are not more persistent and pres- ent ; and if they were, to follow them would bring Satisfaction, not Remorse, to a Non-moral Being — This Fact not alterable by Reflection — Dar- win derives Conscience from what tacitly im- plies it, . . ... . , I'AOB 181 CHAPTER VI. MM THE DEVELOPMENT OP MORAL IDEALS AND INSTITUTIONS, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE FAMILY. MM I 111! I Darwin's Service to Histovical Ethics indirec'; — History of Morals and Ethical Theories — The Family and ip: Contents, XV Domestic Virtues— McLennan's Theory of the Evolution of the Family— Form of Capture, Wife- stealing, Exogamy, Infanticide, Kinship through Females— Fallacy of supposing a Universal, Uni- form Development — Absolute Promiscuity a mere Fancy — The Facts of Infanticide, Wife stealing, Polyandry, Exogamy, do no* warrant McLeunan*3 Conclusions— Morgan's Theory— Infers Family from System of Relationship— The Malayan Sys- tem gi- ^s the Consanguine Family, and the Tura- nian the Punaluan — The Pairing, the Patriarchal, and the Monogamous Families — Aryan System of Relationship— This Theory follows the Process of Logical Determination rather than Historical Facta — Consanguine Family, on which all depends, a Baseless Myth — Malayan System of Relationship not based on Blood-ties ; it is merely a Classifica- tion of Generations — Nor would the Consanguine Family account for it — Explanation rf the Tura- nian System different from Morgan's — The other Families examined — Difficulty of determining the Development of the Family —Fallacy in Professor Robertson Smith's Method — Facts, not Theories, concern the Moralist — Some Facts concerning Limited Promiscuity, Kinship through Females, Settling in the Tent of the Woman, Infidelity, Maidenly I ichastity. Sale of Wives, Incest — Chastity n ^t a part of the Content of the Moral Law Universal— But even the Relativist must agree that the Moral Law has mme Absolute Con- tent — Testimony of Civilized and Uncivilized Mo- rality — Points of Difference explained — Tlie Posi- tion of Woman — Her Glory under the Roman Empire — Her Present and Future Position — The Operation of Divorce overlooked — Science cannot tell what ought to be, . PAQB 201 I ETHICAL IMPORT OF DARWINISM. CHAPTER I. METHODS OF ETHICS, EVOLUTIONAEY AND OTHER. Nothing can be more perplexing to anyone re- flecting upon the unanimity of men's moral judg- ments than the diversity and contrariety of the theories founded upon tliem. The incongruity is as palpable as it is startling. Kor is it much, if at all, relieved by the qualification of varying moral belief and practice, which a more extended survey of humanity, past and present, obl'gesus to make in our first generalization. For if human moral- ity is not at all times and in all places absolutely identical, it is rather in minor details or in unex- pected applications of common principles that there is an}" considerable deviation from the uni- versal type. Besides, this divergency cannot be the origin of our opposing ethical theories, since were it to vanish, they would still remain. And, it Diversity of Ethical Theories, ym \ ! i indeed, it is a simple matter of history that the antinomies of our ethical systems have not origi- nated in a distinct consciousness of differences in moral codes, for these systems are almost always theories, not of varying universal morality, but of the common morality of the modern civilized world. The contrast, therefore, between the uni- formity of moral data and the diversity of so- called moral sciences suffers no diminution from the circumstance that that uniformity may be to some extent relative. The broad fact remains, that while all are agreed that certain courses of conduct are right and the opposite w^rong, moral- ists seem unable to agree in anything except the contradictory claim of building their incompatible theories upon these universally recognized propo- sitions. There can be no question about the existence of this fundamental antinomy. It is admitted, or rather it is accentuated, by the ablest writers on morals. Nor has any attempt, I believe, ever been made to explain it away. But while it is mentioned as a commonplace, and put aside as if from fear of demonstrating a truism, its conse- quences have been steadily overlooked. No one has inquired whether a subject-matter which has begotten such contradictions really admits of M Methods of Ethics, 3 ficientific treatment at all. Schleiermacher is bcarcely an 'ixception, since his profound and pen- etrating critique is rather a dialectical exposition of moral principles and ideas than a logical in- vestigation into the requirements of a moral sci- ence. Yet the question is surely of primary im- portance. We cannot think so meanly of science as to believe it \ ssible for the same problem to have opposite solutions. The history of ethics, however, presents us with this incredibility. Is, then, ethics a science ? This question, unfortu- nately, was not raised by Kant. Had it occurred to him his legacy to future ages would scarcely have included, along with a demonstration of the impossibility of metaphysics, an actual metaphysic of ethics. But the errors of great thinkers are scarcely less instructive than theii* perfect achieve- ments. And Kant's critique of our a priori knowledge suggests the kind of inquiry from which ethics can no longer be withheld. When, along with the possibility of pure mathematics and physics, he asks. How is metaphysics in general possible ? and. How is metaphysics as a science possible? he formulates the very ques- tions which, mutatis mutandis, the history of modern ethics and the logic of the sciences alike make incumbent upon contemporary moralists. Need of a Critique, r ! i( And nntil these questions on the possibility of their science are answered, they should (to ap- propriate Kant's language) be solemnly and legally suspended from their present dubious oc- cupation. It may be objected, however, that we have prejudged the question of the actual existence of ethics as a science in accepting the adverse jjWwa facie evidence drawn from the number and the opposition of ethical theories. The same diver- sity, it will be alleged, is found in other sciences whose validity no one thinks of doubting. In fact, putting aside, on the one hand, the purely observational sciences (if there be any, for chem- istry is no longer one), in which demonstration has not begun, and, on the other hand, the math- ematical sciences, in which it is complete, it will be hard to find any Intervening science which is, and has been, wholly exempt from the contradic- tions of opposing hypotheses. In natural history, for instance, our own generation has " assisted " at the liveliest disputations concerning the nature and origin of species ; and our fathers witnessed, in the domain of physics, a struggle scarcely less bitter between the corpuscular and the undulatory theories of light. Mathematics even has been in the past the scene of like encounters ; for Methods of Ethics. 5 thongli the analytical geometry of Descartes pre- vailed without opposition, a fierce wai'fare was waged over the coniparative merits of the fluxions of Newton and the calculus of Leibnitz. And (to have done with illustration) the Ptolemaic and the Copernican hypotheses long held the field together as rival systems in astronomy. Yet, in the face of such radical opposition of theories, it was never maintained that the sciences of astronomy, mathematics, physics, and biology were illusory, or even impossible. Should not the examples bo a warning to us against inferring over-hastily the illegitimacy of ethical science ? And yet there is a difference. Those oppo- sitions, as we know, have been ultimately set at rest, while ethics remains the scene of perpet- ual antinomies. Where the controversies have not been laid, as, for instance, in political econ- omy, the legitimacy of the science has actually been denied. To ethics alone belongs the excep- tional prerogative of ranking as a science while retaining for subject-matter the still unsettled questions which three-and-twenty centuries ago were already themes of discussion among the savants of the Hellenic world. What, then, constitv tes a science ? If this can be determined, we shaU be in a position to decide I Hi 6 Whai is Science f upon the scientific pretensions of ethics. We cannot define science, however, until the very point at issue is settled — whether that term is to denote, along with the various branches of our systematic knowledge of natural phenomena and their quantitative relations, such disciplines as logic, dialectic, ethics, and metaphysics. Certain- ly the oldest known classification of the sciences embraced logic, ethics, and physics. And apart from the sciences themselves, we have no royal rule of exclusion or admission. In doubtful cases, therefore, the only course open to us is to compare the branches whose scientific character is questioned, with others whose scientific char- acter is impeachable. First of all, then, following the ancient classi- fication, ethics may be compared with logic. Now, logic is the science of reasoning, taking that term in its broadest sense. In other words, it is the theory of the ascertainment of reasoned or inferred truth. It does not undertake to find reasons, but to determine what is required to con- stitute them, to point out the conditions to which all facts must conform in order that they may serve as proof or evidence. But these conditions are not deduced from any transcendent source. They are simply the rules which men observe in M:. Methods of Ethics, We 1 very n is to of our la and nes as ertain- uiencea I apart ) royal jubtful lis is to aracter c char- ; classi- logic. ing that (Is, it is )ned or to find to con- which ey may nditions source, serve in the reasonings and inferences of their every-day life, without reflection, or even without distinct consciousness. Logic, accordingly, gives us no new information. It merely makes explicit for reflection what was already implicit in cognition. But our stock of knowledge is not increased by an analysis of tho processes whereby it has been obtained. My syllogistic reasonings, my assump- tion of universal causation, my deductive and ex- perimental investigations may proceed now, as they did originally, in utter independence of a logical formulation of them. Is ethics, now, a science of this character? Some analogy, at least, lies upon the surface. As logic analyzes and classifies the processes of thought, so ethics may be regarded as a system- atic exhibition of the phenomena of conscience. It has not to determine of itself the nature of good or evil, but simply to observe, collect, and classify the moral experience of mankind. Its observations should be true, its collections ex- haustive, its classifications systematic. The re- sult, among other things, would include a list of virtues, such as temperance, fortitude, etc., or a table of duties, such as duties to friends, to the state, to humanity. But an ethical science so re- stricted, it would, I think, be difficult, if not im- r 8 Ethics compared with Logic. *! I possible, to find anywhere realized. Moralists have deemed it a part of their business to in- quire into the foundations of moral judgments, and even, in some cases, to correct and improve them. It is as though logicians should under- take to establish, or even to remodel, those laws of thought which they have hitherto accepted from the general consciousness of mankind. Such in- quiries no more belong to logic than an inquiry into the nature of space or the evidence of the axioms belongs to geometry. And if ethics is to take rank with logic as a science of pure observa- tion and analysis, it must be purged of these ex- traneous questions that range beyond the limits of description and classification. With this limi- tation of its subject-matter would come, no doubt, a diminution of interest ; since it has been pre- cisely by the problems thus excluded that morals have always fascinated the deepest thinkers, and withheld them (Aristotle alone excepted) from es- saying a descriptive ethics, the lack of which, as when Bacon first deplored it, we must still make good by the concrete illustrations of dramatic poetry. But T am not maintaining that ethics ehould be curtailed. I am concerned only with its scientific character. And I think it evident that, though ethics may, for all that, bo a legiti- Methods of Ethics, 9 mate science, It cannot claim to be a science of the same type as logic, without,at least foregoing the problems which have hithe'to constituted its principal subject matter. Can ethics, then, be likened to mathematics? Between this science and logic there are striking points of contrast. Mathematics reasons about real existence in its most general aspects of space and time and number ; logic deals only v/ith the empty forms of reasoning. Both start with fun- damental principles of intelligence ; but the pro- cedure in one case is anJytic, in the other syn- thetic. In logic, consequently, there is no subse- quent advance upon the initial laws of thought, with which everything else is given ; but in math- ematics the axioms and definitions are, by con- structive imagination or synthetic insight into new relations, realized into a body of demonstrations, which are not less certain than the first prin- ciples, but of which these gave no anticipation or prophetic hint. A real science thus formed by the mind out of its own resources, in utter indepen- dence of sense, is too captivating an ideal for the genius of speculation to resist ; and it has been the model of the systems at least of Plato and Spinoza. Even a mind so sober and cautious as Locke's did not escape the fascination, and that, too, with IT V ly lo Ethics compared with Mathematics, regard to ethics. Though he never undertook the task, and when urged to it, late in life, by his friend Molyneux, declined on the ground of a preference for the practical morals of the New Testament, Locke nevertheless tells "s, more than once, and maintains, in accordance with his doc- trine of the self-arclietypal character of complex ideas, that the rules of morality may be demonstrat- ed in the same manner, and with the same evi- dence, as the propositions of geometry. He recog- nizes, as compared with moral ideas, the greater simplicity of mathematical ideas, and their repre- sentability by diagrams or other sensible marks ; and though he admits this gives to the ideas of quantity a real practical advantage, and has made them thought more capable of certainty and dem- onstration, he yot emphatically reiterates that " from self-evident propositions by necessary con- sequences, as incontestable as those in mathematics, the measures of right and wiong might be made out to anyone that will apply himse)f with the same indifferency and attention to the one as he does to the other of these sciences." What, then, are these " self-evident propositions" which constitute the foundations of our duty and rules of action ? If we look for anything so simple and evident as the axioms, definitions, and postulates of geometry, v;e Methods of Ethics, II shall be much deceived. Far inDre than this is included in those first principles in virtue of which morality is to be placed amongst the sciences capable of demonstration. They comprise "the idea of a Supreme Being, infinite in power, good- ness, and wisdom, whose workmanship we are, and on whom we depend ; and the idea of our- selves, as understanding, rational beings." But the admission of even such principles does not assimilate the scientific character of ethics to that of mathematics. It seems to do so only be- cause of the inveterate, though ungrounded, habit of regarding mathematical truths as deductions from given first principles. So long as the theo- rems of geometry and algebra are imagined to follow from the axioms and definitions with the same inner necessity as a syllogistic conclusion from its major and minor premises, so long must the procedure of mathematics appear applicable to ethics when once the hotter has discovered suit- able starting-points. For both sciences are thus conceived as merely specialized forms of logic. This, however, is to overlook precisely the essen- tial point. If ratiocination in ethics, as in logic, gives us no new information, leaving us in the issue exactly where we stood at the outset, there is, on the contrary, in the demonstrations of 1 2 Locke s Mathematical Method, ! ! mathematics a constant advance upon previous attainment, so that each new result is an original addition to what went hefore, not, as in logic, a mere explication of it. Every mathematical prop- osition, being the expression of a fresh insight, of a brand-new perception of relations, by the synthetic activity of the mind, has its voucher, not in antecedent truths, but in the immediate affirmation of that constructive intelligence by which those truths in continnous regression to the axioms have been evidenced and maintained. It is not, therefore, as Locke snpposed, merely a lack of first principles from which ethics suffers in comparison with mathematics. Ethics is fatally handicapped in quite a different way. In the spatial relations, e.g.^ with which geometry deals, the mind has the power (prior to sense-experi- ence, too) of making intuitive discoveries, of con- structing, as it were, by its own native activity, a genuine science (vvliich is afterwards found valid for the objects of perception). The geometer, accordingly, knows a great deal more about the relations of space than the rest of mankind do. But the moralist can tell us nothing new about morality. The sciences begun by Euclid and Archimedes have been so extended in the course of eighty generations that the most arduous study Methods of Ethics. 13 of a lifetiine often fails to cover the range of their original discoveries. But the science begun by Socrates is still unfounded ; and every school- boy knows as much about morals as the greatest ethical philosophers, though among them have been included the noblest geniuses of humanity. The subject-matter of ethics u^^^snot, like mathe- matics, admit of progressive determination by the synthetic intuition of the mind. And the rea- son, sincfc Kant's time, is not far to seek. Good- ness is not, like space, a constitutive, d priori form of our sensuous experience. Any new proposi- tions you make about it, therefore, can never be actualized into fact ; they remain a dialectical exercise, or eveii a play of words. And so long as that is so, no supply of first principles can con- fer upon ethics the scientific character of mathe- matics ; they stand as widely apart as analysis of the known and synthesis of the unknown ; and if you persist in calling them both demonstrative, you must not overlook the vital difference that the mathematician demonstrates by direct insight into new relations, the moralist solely by unfold- ing what is already taken for granted. In the nature of things, therefore, Locke's M'ell-meant attempt to introduce the procedure of mathemat- ics into ethics was doomed to miscarry. r f ;ii; liiji i i 14 Locke s First Principles, It follows, too, that in the analytic deduction of moral rules from Locke's first principles — the idea of a Supreme Being, on whom we depend, and of ourselves as rational beings — the difficulties at- taching to our conception of moral rules are not removed, but simply refunded into the assumed first principles. If they are not immediately vis- ible there it is only because the assumptions are so much vaster than this particular application of them that our special problem is overshadowed by the larger issues to which its solution has given rise. But a moment's reflection will show that the debated points of morals cannot be made to disappear, even at the theistic point of view. And it is a matter of history that theistic moral- ists fall into the sanje ethical antagonisms as the sceptics do. Faley and Butler, Edwards and Kant, are, in some respects, as fundamental oppositions as the whole history of ethics presents. I^or is the fact really surprising. For the idea of a Supreme Being, on whom man depends, con- tains no information about man's moral nature, or the end of his conduct, or his specific duties and obligations. You cannot deduce from that idea the character of conscience or will ; it does not supply you with a standard of morality ; it does not show you in particular cases what you 'H! m\ Methods of Ethics, 15 oufflit to do. It is an extraneous form, into which yon pour the whole ethical content, be that con- tent wliat it may. Morality is not a deduction from theism, but theism a superinduction upon morality. It is only by observation, analysis, and reflection we can discover wherein man's moral life consists. And the results thus experientially established would never have been mistaken for deductions, had men kept in view tlie distinction between knowledge and the sapposed vouchers of it, between the ratio cognoscendi and the al- leged ratio essendi. The idea of a Supi-eme Being is not, nor can it be (as Locke held), the ratio cognoscendi of morality. Whether it can be the ratio essendi is another point which we need not here discuss, but which, though granted, would be a fruitless admission in the face of scep- tical and agnostic science. Theological ethics cannot get under way at all without proving the existence of God ; but neither that nor any other superior principle can endow ethics with the demonstrative character of mathematics. It has now been shown that ethics is not a science of the type of logic or mathematics. The next thing is to compare it with the natural and historical sciences. If its scientific character pre- sents no analogy or only a partial analogy to .1 1 6 Ethics and the Natural Sciences. theirs, then notliing remains bnt to point out its unique natiu'e, and inquire finally whether etliics be not less a science than a branch of speculation ? In the meantime, however, we must not forget, and may derive hope fiom, the current fashion of identifying the science of morals with the sciences of nature. Though mathematical ethics be .", vision, who shall say that physical ethics may not become an actuality ? The sciences of nature have been classified as deductive or experimental. Originally they weie all experimental ; their laws expressing only those particular nniformitic? which observation and experiment showed to exist, but giving no reasons for their existence. Such an empirical law we have, e.g.^ in the tendency of hot water to break glass. Now, when the particular em- pirical laws of a science can be brought into re- lation to more general laws, seen to be special applications of them, and so deducible from them, that science passes from the experimental to the deductive sta^/ The cracking of glass by hot water, for example, takes its place as a phenom- enon of deductive science as soon as it has been shown that heat tends to expand all substances, that the crack is due to the expansion of the heated portion in spite of the adjacent cooler por- if Methods of Ethics, 17 tion, and that no crack would have occurred had tho heat been equally diffused as in tliin glass vessels through which it passes rapidly. The illustration suggests that deductive science, hav- ing apprehended the reasons of phenomena, may be able to predict their occurrence ; and every- body is acquainted with the sublime prophetic achievements of astronomy. This power of pre- diction clearly marks off the deductive from the experimental sciences. And so much being premised, we are now prepared for the inquiry whether ethics belongs to either division ? If it be of the same general type as the sciences of nature, it must be either a deductive or an experi- mental science. In assigning ethics to either of these classes, however, one assumption is made too significant to pass without distinct mention. The sciences of nature all rest upon the presupposition that events i idlow one another in a fixed and regular order, that the same cause under the same circumstances always produces the same effects, that the entire realm of natural phenomena is subject to the reign of inexorable law. Deny the principle of universal causation, and natural science is smitten with paralysis. Yo'7 may be in doubt about the proof of the principle ; you may attempt to for- I ! i ! ill! HI i8 The Law of Causation. tify its validity by djyi'ioH deduction, like Kant, or by observation, like Mill, or you may, like Lotze, confess it is the iiidcnionstiable postulate of all our knowledge ; but you cannot for a mo- ment fail to see that the law, however it may be established, is indispensable to the natural and physical sciences, which presuppose it at every step. Now, to say that ethics is a science of the same type as botany or astronomy is to assert that the methods of investigation applicable to the latter are equally suited to the former, and consequently that constancy of causation, which is the founda- tion of those methods, nmst obtain among moral phenomena with the same rigorous invariability as among the events of nature. Kor can anj'onc at all alive to the drift of contemporary thought and culture have failed to observe the prevalent acceptance of this determinism, especially on the part of the ever increasing innnber of scientific inquiroi's. Schopenhauer, indeed, erected the dogma into a test of mental vigor, and maintained, with characteristic asperity and assurance, that none but intellectual dwarfs could be libertaiians. At the present day the triumphant reign of physical science has begotten a distrust in meta- physical ethics; and men have turned tlicir gaze Methods of Ethics. 19 from the iionineiial freedom in wliicli Kant found tlio sine qua own of duty, to look for a basis of morality in the sensible facts of the phenomenal world. And it is really claimed that, after the lapse of so many barren centuries of ethical logom- achy, the science of morals has at last been set upon an immovable foundation through the dis- covery that human conduct is subject to necessary relations of cause and effect, from which all moral rules are ultimately deduced. This bold reconstruction of ethics on the law of universal causation, after the model of a deductive science like astronomy, has been attempted by Mr. Herbert Spencer. Unfortunately, however, of Mr. Spencer's promised "Principles of Mo- rality," only the first part — the "Data of Ethics" — has yet appeared; and this instalment, though postulating for ethics an immediate evolution, like that which in the course of centuries transformed empirical into rational astronomy, does not de- monstrate the possibility of such a development, still less accomplish it, or even make its accom- plishment very credible to anyone who can re- sist the contai'ion of the evolutionist's scientific optimism. "When tlie work is completed, it will be easier to judge how far Mr. Spencer has suc- ceeded in deducing moral rules from first ])rinci- ^ I' ' i :!': 20 Mr, Spencer's Demonstrative Method, pies. In tlio meantime, one wlio sees in the un- dertaking merely a repetition of tlie frnitlces attempt of Locke may be allowed to recall Hume's deprecation of the application of deduc- tion to ethics on the ground that this method, though in itself more perfect, was less suited to the imperfection of human nature, and was a common source of illusion and mistake in this as well as in other subjects. But whatever the future may disclose regarding the deducibility of rules of conduct, it is clear that deductive ethics, if it is to be a science, must not start with as- sumptions unwarranted by, or even opposed to, the common-sense of mankind. The first principles of astronomy and physics are indisputable; if ethics is to take rank witii them, its first principles must be equally axiomatic. But Mr. Spencer, under the influence of what Mill has called an d jpriori fallacy, the offspring of hedonism and utilitarianism, lays the foundation of his science of rational, deductive, absolute ethics in the dog- matic identification of goodness with pleasure. He holds it " to be the business of moral science to deduce, from the laws of life and the condi- tions of existence, what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to pro- duce unhappiness. Having done this, its dednc- "m iii III Methods of Ethics, 91 tions are to be recognized as laws of conduct." But that moral rules have no other foundation than their felicific consequences is so far from self-evident, so foreign to popular thought and modes of expression, to say nothing of moral philosophy, that the proposition could only emerge as a final result, not stand as the first datum, of a truly scientific ethics. Accordingly, the scientific character of morals — arid it is that we are now investigating — will not be affected by the contingent issues of Mr. Spencer's venture- some enterprise. Should ho, like Locke, fail in his promised deduction of rules of conduct, the so- called *^ national ethics" will have lost its doughti- est champion ; should he succeed, his deductions will afford no proof of the evolution of empirical into rational ethics until it has first been estab- lished that the logical movement has really been in the ethical sphere — that is, until it has been shown that the counsels of prudence and precepts of utility, which he professes to have deduced from the laws of life and the conditions of exist- ence, are synonymous with the moral laws intui- tively recognized by mankind. But this, unfor- tunately, has been a quoBstio vexata since the very beginning of moral philosophy, and it is ap- parently no nearer settlement to-day than at its iJ! r 1^1 111 lii 22 Empirical Ethics. first discussion between the yontlif iil Socrates and the venerable Protagoras, when, in the whirl of debate, the protagonists were unwittingly carried round to opposite sides, and each was in the issue amazed to find himself attacking the position he deemed impregnable and espousing the cause he repudiated as false. But there are, as we have seen, two types of the sciences of nature — the deductive and the empirical — represented respectively by astrono- my and botany. And if at present ethics cannot claim to rank with the deductive, may it not at least find a place among the natural sciences of t}ie empirical kind ? Failing to justify this position, ethics, it would seem, nmst be stripped of its scientific pretensions, and banished to that dim region of ontological abstractions which ag- nostic metaphysicians keep for their gnostic rivals — a limbo of iiitellectual inanities, of ghosts of human speculation {vanitaa vanitatum\ which, like the unaccomplished works of nature, re- mains forever " abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed." There is, however, reason to believe that physical ethics, empirical if not deductive, is by no means an impossibility. It is certain that, apart from Mr. Spe.jcer, this is the method of ethics generally Methods of Ethics. 23 adopted by the evolutionists. Eschewing every at- tempt to deduce moral rules for the guidance of conduct, they institute an inquiry into the origin of that morality by which human life is actually regulated. It is not their business to tell men how they should act, or to supply them with motives for originating or principles for regulating their be- havior, still less to mete ont esteem and afPec- tion or hatred and contempt upon what may be considered the estimable or the blameable quali- ties of men. On the contrary, their aim is purely theoretical. They seek only the genesis )f those moral notions, beliefs, and practices, which constitute an obvious phenomenon of the life of man. As there is an anatomy of the body, which resolves limbs into tissues and tissues into cells, and a physiology, that represents the modes in which the functions of the body are per- formed, so there may be a physiology and anat- omy of conscience, to inquire into its operations, to dissect complex moral phenomena into simple elements, and finally, under the guidance of evolution, to track these elements to their last hiding-place in the physical constitution and en- vironment of the lower animals. The natural history of moral phenomena may still be unwrlt- tea ; but if it be true, as logicians tell us, that l"il |i;iii ill Hi iUill!!i m^ 24 Analogy with Physical Science, any facts which follow one another according to constant laws are in themselves fitted to be a sub- ject of science, why deny the scientific character of an investigation whose ideal is to follow tlie development of morality from its earliest rudi- ments and to ascertain the order of antecedence and consequence in the series of intervening phenomena ? Physical ethics, based on the law o^: universal causation, applies to morality the same method of investigation as biology has used for the elucidation of the true relations of the phenomena of life ; and on whatever ground we term the one a science, the other would seem entitled to the same appellation. Nevertheless there is a striking difference, if not in the intrinsic character, in the external con- dition of these two sciences. Biology, as natural history of life, is an achievement ; physical ethics, as natural history of morals, is a dream. It may be that the aspiration of the scientific moralist is a genuine prophecy, that his vision is an inspira- tion of the faculty divine ; but it must be ad- mitted that in the meantime his ideal of a science of ethics is unrealized. And this negative in- stance is sufficiently striking to give pause to our scientific enthusiasm. Let us consider the matter a little more closely. Methods of Ethics, 25 It will be conceded that, so far as observation and classification go, moral phenomena are not less manageable than biological ; and in this re- spect both sciences stand on the same level as logic and psychology. At the next stage, how- ever, a difference emerges. After biological phenomena have been noted and grouped, they may be resolved into simpler elements, as the tis- sue, e.g..^ into cells. And in chemistry, though obviously not iu biology, it is possible to verify the analysis by a reproduction of the complex through synthesis of its resultant elements. But moral phenomena are not susceptible of a similar analysis. Every resolution of morality, or of any part of it, info something else must needs be arti- ficial and arbitrary. You do not here know what is simple and what compound. In this respect ethics falls behind even psychology in its amena- bility to scientific methods. The psychologist, starting from the side of objective science, is wont to take sensition as his datum, and from that stand-point is justified in regarding it as better known than any other mental experience ; so that an explanation of the higher intellectual pro- cesses and products may always be given by re- solving them into this datum, as when Hobbes, following Aristotle, describes imagination as " de- fir ! i ^■m t 11 26 Comparison with Biology, cajing sense." Ueyond sensation, psychology does not go ; but psycho-physics shows that an appar- ently simple sensation is itself made np of ele- ments — Leibnitz's j)etites percej)tions — which may be expressed for science in terms of the stimuli in which they originate. But this regressive analysis of the more complex into the lees com- plex, until indecomposable factors are at last reached, cannot be applied to moral phenomena without making arbitrary and unwarrantable as- sumptions. This limitation of ethics, inherent in its subject-matter, is constantly overlooked ; and to the ignoring of it is due the diverse and mut- ually confuting systems of derivative morals. The farther we remove from simple observa- tion and classification, the greater is the differ- ence between the scientific character of ethics and biology. And to the disadvantage aheady noticed we have now to add another, which goes to the very root of the matter in hand, and seems to negate the possibility of turning the ideal of physical ethics into an actuality. When the biologist, besides dissecting complex phenom- ena into their elements, also demonstrates in a long series of forms, existent or extinct, the grad- ual building up of the complex organisms out of the simpler (by means, as he believes, of natural Methods of Ethics. 27 selection), he appeals, not to imagination, but to observation ; for the successive growths are act- ually open to view on the surface of the earth or in its fossiliferous strata. He may be wrong in his explanation of the process of development — and it is not improbable that natural selection is not the only or even the chief agency ; but about the existence of a series of related forms that have followed one another through the lapse of vast geological epochs there cannot bo a particle of doubt. With our scientific moralist, however, the case is absolutely different. I do not mean merely that he is ignorant of the connections be- tween moral phenomena ; for facts may become the subject of science though the laM-s of their sequence be undiscovered or even beyond the reach of discovery by our existing resources. But without the facts themselves there csi be no science. And it is the misfortune of the scien- tific type of ethics we are now investigating that the phases of morality it binds together in its theory of development are, when not a part of human history, purely imaginary. We know nothing about the morals of the first species that ceased to be non-moral. From structural affinities and rudiments the naturalist may trace the genealogy of man and reconstruct his simian or m I !i « VM I! 28 Ethics not a Science like Biology, pre-simian ancestors ; but what material is tliere for determining their morals — what but the indi- vidual preconceptions of the inquirer? And of tlie morality of even our own race, in its pre-his- toric stage, we are in similar ignorance. What marks of virtue, e.g.^ do you find in the shape, or size, or cubic capacity of the Neanderthal skull ? There is no fossil pi^e-human unorality. And for lack of it the ideal of physical ethics remains unrealized. The outlook for the " science " of ethics grows less promising at every new survey. With which- ever of the sciences we compare it, some reason emerges for excluding it from them. Its data do not carry it back with biology to the dawn of life. It is not, like mathematics, synthetic and demonstrative. And if it is to take rank with logic, it must forego every function except classification and observation, and be content to pass rather as a formal discipline than a real science. Perhaps, however, we have been over-hasty in rejecting physical ethics, or, rather, the physical method of ethics. Though in its extant form of an imaginary development of moral from im- aginary pre- moral phenomena it overleaps itself and, with vaulting ambition, falls to the other side, Methods of Ethics, 29 it is not inconceivable that the method might be so applied as to produce a genuine science, but of narrower limits in space and time than current evolutionary ethics is wont to set. Such re- strictions are given, indeed, in the very subject- matter of ethics. For moral phenomena imply moral beings ; and since, as Darwin himself tells us, " a moral being is one who is capable of com- paring his past and future actions or motives, and of approving or disapproving of them," and " we have no reason to suppose that any of the lower animals have this capacity," it follows that the science of morals should take cognizance only of " man, who alone," as Darwin emphatically adds, " can with certainty be ranked as a moral being." There is, therefore, nothing to carry the scien- tific moralist out of the human sphere. It is different with the biologist. The human hand is constructed on the same pattern as the hand of a monkey, or the foot of a horse, or the wing of a bat ; and the human embryo is at first hardly dis- tinguishable from the embryo of a dog, or seal, or reptile ; so that any scientific explanation of man's bodily organism is in.idequrite, \i not iiii- pnssiblc, witliont rcfcrcnc^e to tiie lower animals. lUit in ethics such reference seems little less than a vain panide. You may of courtc study the so lis 7 heme Limited io Man, psjcliical attributes of tlie dog or the elephant, and this is a field much in need of cultivation ; but liowcvcr rich your harvest of observations, you will be no whit nearer the origin of human r, o- rality so long, at least, as conscience contiiuies the unique prerogative of man, the only moral being we know. Even if you imagine a moral sense in the higher brutes, your descriptive ethics, though acquiring thereby a comparative character, would bo as far as ever from that genesis of man's mo- rality which evolutionary moralists profess to ex- plain in their theories of physical ethics. Accord- ingly, the scientific moralist, instead of roaming comprehensively over the fields of animal life, must brood intensely at the altar-fires of the hu- man heart. However deep the mysteries of man's moral nature, no irradiating light falls upon them from the non-moral world without. The moral being is more than the child of nature ; lie is the member of a kingdom where time and space ai-e not. Yet is virtue not withholden from scientific survey, since its manifestations fall in time and constitute a part of the history of hu- manity. And if ethics, instead of groping through the void, impalpable inane of fictitious pre-human moralit}^, would in good earnest describe historic morality in all its fixed and changing characters, Methods of Ethics. 31 tracing the evolution of moral ideals and institu- tions from their earliest to their present form, then its scientific character, which is to-day a reproach, would be firmly established, and it could claim to be a science as unimpeachable as any other branch of history. Some such ideal doubtless floated before the minds of those writers who saw in ethics a comparative and evo- hitionary anatomy and physiology of morals ; but the associations of natural history led them to sub- stitute the whole extent and duration of organic life, which is essentially without moral character, for the narrow and brief history of mankind, in vrhich alone moral phenomena are actually found. Here then, at last, we have an answer to the question, Ilow is ethics as a science possible ? If it is ever to rise above the analytic proceaure of logic, it can only be by becoming one of the historical sciences. Given the earliest morality of which we have anv written record, to trace from it through progressive stages the morality of to-day : that is the problem, and the only prob- lem which can fall to a truly scientijio ethics. The discovery ol: these historical sequences con- stitutes the peculiarity of the science, which, like every other, presupposes observation, analysis, and classification. Whenever a system of ethics pro- !'t I 32 Ethics a Branch of History. fesses to be a science of any other type, whether of tlie physical or the inatliematical, it is setting up its own speculations for facts, and imposing upon us a dogmatism for which no shibboleth can atone, be that shibboleth intuitional or utili- tarian, absolutist or relativist, pro- or anti-evolu- tionary. This conclusion cannot be other than unac- ceptable at a time when philosophical schools, differing so widely in theory, have agreed in the practice of producing and reading innumerable works on " moral science^'* or the " science of ethics " as it is now more generally designated. And yet the conclusion is inevitable. I dare not say, as Buckle used to say categorically of a very different proposition, what makes it so pe- culiarly offensive is, that it is impossible to refute it. But, assuredly, it is not easy to imagine how it can be disproved. Range, in fancy, over the whole circle of the sciences, and you will find there no place for ethics save as a brand 1 of human history. Whatever else has been as- signed it, belongs not to science, but to specula- tion ; and is none the less speculation because carried on by professed scientists. Putting aside the inquiry into the faculties or functions of the mind, which is plainly a ])art of psychology, think Methods of Ethics. 33 but for a moment of some of the questions dis- cussed in current treatises on tlio "scieuce of ethics." "What is the chief end of man ? Is the will free or determined ? Is conscience innate or acquired? Is moral law absolute or relative? How did morality first come into existence ? Is there any other good than pleasure ? This is a sample, and but a sample, of the problems which moralists complacently include in what they desig- nate ethical science. To questions like these an- swers are unhesitatingly given, even by agnostics, who know that we cannot know anything but phenomena. Manifestly the age which has wit- nessed the divorce of science and speculation in physics, biology, and even psychology, has not in ethics succeeded in keeping them asunder. And ethics will never rank as a positive science until, following the lead of jurisprudence and ethnol- ogy, it exorcise the spirit of speculation, and enthrone the spirit of history as it is reflected in the cognate investigations of Maine and Tliering, of Tylor, Letourneau, and McLennan. I do not deny the possibility of a philosophy of morals, or even of law or of culture. On the contrary, I am convinced that every positive science — chemistry, physics, and mathematics equally with jurisprudence and ethics — leads up 8 I § 34 Scientific and Speculative Ethics, inevitably to a nrpmr7\ i\o. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-S) k^(0 1.0 I.I 1^128 12.5 ■50 *■" ImHH N^ 11.25 i u 1 ^ f // ^1 V "l ^ /w Photographic Sciences Corporation 33 WIST MAIN STREiT WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) •72-4503 ^z^^ ^.4^ «- > o^ !^ 76 Scientific Explanation, cattscB, to agencies actually known to be in opera- tion. The excessive fecundity of all organic be- ings, the limited means of subsistence, the inev- itable struggle for life, the advantage accruing, in this struggle, to some individuals in conse- quence of slight modifications in organ or func- tion, structure or habit, such as nature in liberal variety is perennially turning up, the preserva- tion of these favored forms, and the consolidation and accumulation, through transmission to sue- cessive generations, of their beneficial peculiar- ities until first varieties and then species are pro- duced — these are facts which every .observer may verify for himself, and which, it is almost universally conceded, account for the origin of many, if not of all, organic species. And for the scientist who finds no species too marked for gen- esis through this common process the problem has been completely solved. But w^here science ends philosophy begins. The one is concerned with the discovery of pro- cesses, the other has to analyze the ultimates — realities or conceptions, being or thought — which the processes everywhere involve. While science, accordingly, sees no difference between the vari- ous links of the causal chain with which Darwin draws out the development of life, philosophy The Metaphysics of Darwinism, 'jy fixes at once npon a fundamental contrast between the initial variations and the subsequent means of their preservation. It regards the former as infinitely more significant than the latter. For the variations are the ultimate material out of which species are built up ; and though the manner of their consolidation is an important problem for science, philosophy is interested only in the what? And whence f of the variations themselves. Or, otherwise expressed, every new species being the sum of a seiies of variations, philosophy is concerned with the units, science with the mode of their addition. And this mode it is which Darwin has u.ifolded in his theory of natural selec- tion, or survival of the fittest. There have been objections to the theory, especially to the somewhat startling assumption that the results of man's pur- posive selection in breeding could be attained — and that, toe, on a much larger scale — by the blind and purposeless operations of nature ; but grant- ing all that the hypothesis requires of us, we are slill in presence of the fact that natural selection, or survival of the fittest, can accomplish nothing until it is supplied with material for " selection," until there has appeared upon the field an ante- cedent " fittest " — a fittest organ, function, habit, instinct, constitution, or entire organism. Katu- .i»'' f% Philosophic Explanation. i : ral selection produces nothing ; it only cnlls from what is already in existence. The survival of the fitt&bt is an eliininative, not an originative, process. And yet it is the explication of this apparently subsidiary process that constitutes Darwinism. The fact of variations in organic beings having been demonstrated from the experience of breed- ers, the sphinx of science was the problem of their accuinulation into specific characters. It was not the business of biology to consider what the fact of variations implied. That falls to philosophy, whose function it \'- > exam-ine the starting- points and first principles with which the various sciences uncritically set, about their specific task. The survival of the fittest, I repeat, does not explain the arrival of the fittest. Natural selec- tion is a term connoting the fact that of the in- numerable vlhiations occurring in organisms only the most beneficial are preserved, but it indicates nothing concerning the origin or nature of these variations. As in them, however, is ^^veloped all that is subsequently i The Metaphysics of Darwinism, 8i tendency towards progreseive and mora jperfect development, it is only because the phrase seemed to suggest an '^ internal force beyond the ten- dency to ordinary variability," not that he did not agree with them in holding to some kind ol an " inherent tendency to vary." This, then, is our first determination regarding the variations which supply material for natural selection to work upon. They originate, wo know not how, in the nature of the organism. Nor would the state of the case bo essentially altered if it were ""--^monstrated, in opposition to Darwin, that every organic modification was occasioned by some external stimulus. For the change thus set up in the organism in response to the foreign excitation would obviously derive its character from the constitution of the organism, just as, to use Darwin's own example, the peculiarity of a flame is due to the constitution of the combustible materials, and not to the igniting spark. So much of the origin of the variations. With regard to their nature, it may be either definite or indefinite. That is to say, the offspring of individuals exposed to given conditions during several generations may be modified in a similar or a dissimilar manner. Indefinite variability is the general rule, according to Darwin, who, in 6 i 82 Their Indefinite Character, fact, takes account of no other in his tlieory of the origin of species. He seems to conceive of the organization as absohitely plastic, in unsta- ble equilibrium, and only apparently at rest at a point radiating infinite directions for further movement. The variations, being altogether in- definite, offer themselves to natural selection for any line of development, but not for any partic- ular line. And Darwin was accordingly supposed to have substituted chance for design, a fortui- tous evolution for a purposive creation. It turns out, however, that his assertion of indefinite va- riability was premature, and that in any case it lias no necessary connection with natural selec- tion, which, according to the latest statement of Professor Huxley, would operate equally well " if variability is definite, anr' is determined in certain directions rather than in pthers, by con- ditions inherent in that which varies." And the advance in doctrine is still more strikingly illus- trated when. Prof essor Huxley goes on to say, " it is quite conceivable that every species tends to produce varieties of a limited number and kind, and that the effect of natural selectioji is to favor the development of some of tjiese,^ while it op- poses the development of others along their pre- determined line of modification." This limita-* i\ «; V TAe Metaphysics of Darwinism, 83 tion of the number of variations and the prede- termination of their character are conceptions foreign, I believe, to Darwin's habitual mode of thought, but they may now be considered tenets of the school ; and Professor Asa Gray, adopting categorically the suggestion of Professor Huxley, declares, " The facts, so far as I can judge, do not support the assumption of every-sided and in- difterent variations." The nature and the origin of the modifica- tions being described, we have next to fix atten- tion upon the process of their accumulation into specific characters. It is the exhibition of this process that constitutes the peculiar glory of Dar- winian science. And to science, certainly, as the register of nature's operations, the whole subject of natural selection properly belongs. But when the designation for a purely natural process has, through the suggestions of metaphor and the use of capital letters, come to stand for something more than a process, and, from constant association with an extraneous metaphysics, has acquired the potency of a conjurer's formula in the philoso- phy of life, mind, and conscience, it is high time to set about the perf^nnial problem of laying the dust raised by dogmatic metaphysicians, who are all the more insidious when they disown their 84 How Accumulated. vocation and como to ns in the name of posi- tive Bcienco with the prestige that science gives. Darwinism, iike every great principle when first discovered, intoxicated and unbalanced its dev- otees ; with license unrestrained, it has been ap- plied to fundamental problems of the natural and the spiritual world. But the ultimate mysteries of existence forever baffle, as they ever fascinate, the scientific understanding of man, and an age of confi- dent construction is always followed by an aveng- ing age of destructive ciiticism ; so that the high- towering, wide-extending edifice under which but yesterday intellectual mankind reposed in peace is seen to-morrow as a conventional structure, whose former magnitude Mid splendor arose solely from an optical illusion distorting the perspective and true relations of things. It is with such specula- tions as with the pandemonic coimcillors : I " They but now who seem*d In bigness to surpass Earth's giant sons, Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room Throng numberless, like that Pygmean race Beyond the Indian mount, or farey elves." In the march of mind, if the discovery of new theories is indispensable, equally so is the reduc- tion of the monstrous shapes which they too soon The Metaphysics of Darwinism^ 85 assume to oormal proportions conformable to reality. And ponding tlie morrow of the Dar- winian and post-Darwinian speculations, we may to-day examine what natui'al selection is and what it is not, what it can do and what it can- not do. To maintain that Darwin, who has taught us all we know about the subject, gives an incor- rect account of natural selection would of course be paradoxical. Kor, in the absence of new light from scientific discoveries, is anyone likely to hazard such a judgment. Kevertheless, it will be found that whoever is resolute to see clearly the fact which Darwin means to indicate by the term '' natural selection " must look beneath the phraseology in which it is described, else the es- sence of the matter will be missed amid the distracting associations of highly figurative lan- guage. Kot, of course, that metaphors are unhitelligible, or even undesirable. Only the recollection of the warring creeds that have sprung from biblical imagery, and of the opposing systems of philos- ophy that have turned on the comparison of the mind to a waxen tablet, suggests the necessity of looking away from a metaphorical expression like natural selection to the actual fact which it was 86 Metaphorical Explanation, intended to denote. Kovv, that fact, in utter nakedness, is nothing more than the survival, in the struggle for life, of an individual that has somehow undergone modifications useful to it under the actual conditions of existence. Or, iu Darwin's own words, "This preservation of fa- vorable individual differences and variations, and the destruction o^ those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest." The process, therefore, does not touch the origin of the variations, or even the accumulation of them. Natural selection pro- duces nothing, either at the beginning or in the progress of tiie development ; it means only that when the variafioiis have somehow appeared the most advantageous are preserved, and that when tliese favored fonna heme heen somehow jpro^Or- gated, and tlierehy somehow consolidated, the most favored again survive in the struggle. Nature originates the modifications, nature propagates them, nature accumulates them through propaga- gation ; but how all this is done is a mystery on which science throws no light, and the personifi- cation of nature serves only to disguise our real ignorance. On the other hand, we can under- stand from the well-known fact of the increase of life beyond the means of subsistence that, ^ The Metaphysics of Darwinism, 87 given the creations, the transmissions) the arcu- mulationd) tlio worst favored must perish and only the fittest survive ; and this fact it is — this single ray of light athwart a path of darkness unpenetrated — that Darwin designates natural selection. Now, the personification of nature is quite legit- imate, and often unavoidable. But when a more event of nature, like the one we have just de- scribed, comes to be invested with a title so sug- gestive of volitional attributes as " Natural Selec- tion " is, the imagination cannot fail to run riot with the understanding, and the mind is apt to become the slave of what Bacon calls the idola fori. It would indeed be in itself a thankless task to point out the warping influence of met- aphorical language on the mind of a great in- vestigator like Darwin, but when his lapses (which may do no harm in science) are made the grounds of a metaphysical and ethical philoso- phy, the task, however ungrateful, nmst be under- taken. The term natural selection is borrowed by analogy fix)m that purposive selection practised by man in the rearing of domesticated animals and cultivated plants. We have already seen that breeders form varieties that pass for ^^ incipient 88 What Man does in Selection* n Bpecies." This re&nlt is due .o the accamnlation in one direction, dnring many generations, of slight difFereuceSy differences that may be wholly inappreciable to the uneducated eye and touch. ** The key," Bays Darwin, " is man's power of accumulative selection ; nature gives snccessive variations ; man adds them up in certain direc- tions (isef ul to him. " Now, this mode of language (of which I have hitherto availed myself) is not capable of misinterpretation in relation to man ; for everybody knows it is only by metaphor that man can be said to have the power of accunmlat- ing variations or adding them up. It is very manifest that man can do nothing towards the re- sult except leave the varieties that please him fi ee to breed together. As it is nature that gives the modifications, so it is nature that consolidates them ; man's power is limited to selecting from the materials given by nature that on which he wishes her further to operate. But that simple intervention does not explain the accumulation any more than the origination of variations ; and, for the rest, we have to confess that " the laws governing inheritance are for the most part un- known." The breeder's conscious selection, then, is not the cause, but at most the negative condi- tion, of the origin of domestic races. f\ The Metaphysics of Darwinism, 89 Now, in organic beings in a state of nature the struggle for life effects what man's purposive selection effects for domesticated animals ; by re- moving other forms it leaves only those with cer- tain peculiar modifications free to breed together. It is true that in the one case these modifications are such as are pleasing or useful to man ; in the other they are snch as are serviceable to the indi- vidual in its competition with rivals. "Man selects only for his own good ; nature only for that of the being which she tends." But the main point is that, just as domestic varieties arise from the se- lective breeding practised by man, natural varie- ties, which are " incipient species," arise from that selective breeding due to the killing out of competing, but less-favored, forms in the strug- gle for existence. And this natural selection, Darwin holds, is as much superior to human se- lection as the works of nature are to art. " As man," he tells us in a striking passage, " can pro- duce a great result with his domestic animals and plants by adding up in any given direction indi- vidual differences, fo could natural selection, but far more easily, from having incomparably longer time for action." It has been objected that this attribution of superior potency to natu .al selection, in compari- i I'l 90 Human and Natural Selection, son witli the purposive selection of man, involves the conception of nature as an intelligent, active -jeing. Kature seems to do so mucli, it is urged, only because you have personified her ; use un- metaphorical language, and you '^ill not make it credible that blind natural processes can ever at- tain the ends realized by human design. But iliis dogmatism cannot be established. For it is certainly conceivable that that selective breed- ing by which man works all his results might be brought about without the intervention of man. All that is required is that organic beings which have nndergone some modification shall bo al- lowed to propagate it, say, to breed together \ and this would result as inevitably from the extermi- nation of all competing forms as from the exclu- sion of them practised by man. But extermina- tion does take place when variations occur in any individual which give it an advantage over its rivals in the struggle for life ; and since varia- tions useful to man do actually occur in organic beings, it would be a m 'St extraordinary fact if none occurred useful to the beings themselves, especially when we consider the vast possibili- ties for such useful variations contained in the in- finitely complex relations of all organic beings to one another and to their environment. Assum- I The Metaphysics of Darwinism, 91 ing, then, that such advantageous modifications somehow arise, the beings thus characterized will have the best chance of 'i:»ein<^ preserved ; and these serviceable peculiarities will be propagated and, in successive generations, consolidated until there emerge at last varieties, as strongly, or more strongly marked than our domestic races. But this preservation, or survival of the fittest, is what Darwin calU natural selection. And it must now be evident that we have the best grounds for comparing its function in the development of species with man^s function in the formation of domestic races. Not the likening of nature's work to man's, but the assignment to both natural and human selection of results which they are incompetent to produce, is the real valid objection to Darwin's presentation of his theory. We have already seen that man can no more accumulate variations than he can produce them; accumulation is simply a continuous production. And yet, while Darwiii concedes to Hooker and Asa Gray that man " can neither originate varieties nor prevent their occurrence," it is added — and that, too, in passing from human to natural selection — that " he can only preserve and accumulate such as do occur." Only aceumidate / And then, of course, 92 Limits to Both. I \ it is assnmed that natural eelection aconmnlates, too. " It may metaphorically be said that natu- ral selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, the slightest variations ; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and add- ing tip all that are good." And since natural selection is the name of an event that follows from physical causes, the reader gets the impres- sion that the origin of species has at last been referred to a system of purely natural causation. But the true state of the case is very different. "No cause has been discovered for the origin of those variations which, through inheritance, are accumulated into specific characters ; and the theist who formerly believed in a supernatural cause may hold to it still, if he only substitute gradual for sudden creation. Do you say we need not postulate a transcendent cause ? Possi- bly not ; but there is nothing in Darwinism, in the theory of natural selection, to take the func- tion assigned to that supernatural power. If you refer the origination and accumulation of variations to nature, it is not the nature known to science, nature as a complex of phenomena governed by physical laws, but the poet's vision : The Metaphysics of Darwinism, 93 "Of something far more deeply interfnsed, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things." But this conception of nature, however true, is foreign to that system of efficient causes with which alone scientific explanation is concerned. If the scientist, in poetic exaltation, feels with Pope that " God and nature only are the same," or with Goethe that " nature is the living garment of God," he mav speak of the variations out of which specific characters are built up as having natural causes, but he then uses the word " natu- ral " much in the same sense as ordinary people attach to "supernatural." But the naturalist wh > recogn7zes the limits of science will have to confess that variations come in organisms we know not whence, and are accumulated we know not how (though we name the processes varia- bility and inheritance), and that natural selection is only a designation for an event as simple as this — that beings with the most serviceable va- riations survive in the struggle for existence. Katui'al selection is not a power, scarcely even a ! ! ; « 94 The Natural and the Supernatural, process, but the result of a process — namely, of that sifting of forms effected through the all-test- iug combat for life. If this analysis of the fundamental conceptions of the Darwinian theory be correct, much less is really 'explained by that theory than its advocates have been in the habit of supposing. In spite of its prolific application to so many fields of in- quiry, one may still question whether in its na- tive province of biology the account given of the origin of species is not ultimately as supernatural as the dogma which it displaced. It was rightly urged against the latter that creation was not a scientific conception, that explanation consisted in correlating a phenomenon with other phenomena and assigning it a place in the tissue of our ex- perience, and therefore that the reference of species to a Creator was a mode of accounting for them with which science could not be cor.tent. But does the Darwinian theory enable us to rest in purely natural causation ? It tells us that species are the strongly marked varieties that sur- vive in the struggle for life, and that these va- rieties are formed by the consolidation of modi- fications that spontaneously arise in organisms. Here everything is assumed with the primitive organisms and their innate tendency to vary. ^1 The Metaphysics of Darwinism, 95 Has not tlie mystery tliat sbrouded the origin of species been removed simply by the introduc- tion of a new mystery — the wonder of an organ- ism so constituted that it throws off progressive modifications as materials for new species ? That science may ultimately show such variability to be a characteristic of organisms I do not as- sert or deny. My only contention is that that aspect of the problem of the origin of species which led men to refer them to a hyperphys- ical pgency would not thereby be removed ; it would still reappear in the question, "Whence those germinal organisms with their wonderful capabilities of difFeientiating into species ? And to this question there is no satisfactory answer within the province of natural or physical causa- tion. So that ultimately it comes to this — the gradual development of species is one mode of conceiving the action of supernatural causality, the sudden formation of them is another. Dar- winism is an assertion that the former mode has actually been followed, not a denial of the super- natnral ground which both processes presuppose. If the " Origin of Species " opens with the thesis that species are not independent and immutable creations, but variable descendants of common ancestral forms, it closes with the credo that it g6 DarwifCs View of Creation, was "by the Creator" that life with all its potencies was " originally breathed " into these ultimate types. Between this closing and that opening declaration stands the principle of natu- ral selection, which implies that, of all the varie- ties produced by the spontaneous evolutions of the descendants of those divinely created types, only the fittest or most favored survive. But even this sifting process has, ultimately regarded, a supernatural ground. It depends upon the exist- ence of germinal organisms, their growth with reproduction, inheritance, variability, and capa- city for increase beyond the means of subsist- ence — all of which must ultimately be attributed to ** the Creator," who, according to Darwin, breathed " life with its several j)owers " into the primitive forms. To evoluticnary science as thus unfolded by Darwin, or to evolutionary science pui'c and sim- ple without any such theistic reference, it is not competent to philosophy to offer any objection. Biology is clearly within its own province when it follows the history of organisms and delineates the processes or steps by which life has been evolved. To this scientific investigation Darwin- ism makes a twofold contribution. It established, from actual experiments with animals under do- '■ y .' The Metaphysics of Darwinism. 97 mestication, the modifiability of organisms, and tints g/ounded the piesumption that species had been gradually formed. And, in the second place, under the guidance of Malthusianism it showed that the world is inhabited by its present denizens, and not by others, in consequence of the superiority of their modifications over those of their n/als in the general struggle for existence. This is the essential content of Darwinism. And it' is manifestly consistent with any philosophy, empirical or rational, spiritualistic or material- istic, theistic or atheistic. Nevertheless, I thnik every reader of the " Ori- gin of Species " would maintain that it seems to explain something more than the natural processes just indicated, and that, further, it is so far from indifferent to philosophy that it draws much of its inspiration from a definite speculative system — a system, too, essentially opposed to that theism which the author occasionally appropriates. And there can be no doubt about the fact that most of the evolutionists have identified the new doctrine with a philosophy of mechanism and fortuity. By pure physical causation they hold tliat every- thing has been produced from a primeval nebula, or gas-cloud. It was in the beginning, and it has evolved life, intelligence, self-consciousness, all 7 !l W 1 11 ! 98 Darwin s Mechanical Philosophy, reason in man, and the reflex of reason in the order of the universe. Tims no case is left for any hyperphysical agency, much less a creative, designing intelligence. But neither Darwinism nor evolutionism in general really necessitates, or even warrants, such a speculative inference. For if everything has heen evolved from that impalpable nebula, either it was originally inore than a nebula or it has been added to, in the course of its development, from a source beyond itself. An effect is simply its cause translated ; and nothing can be developed into actuality which was not enveloped potentially in the germ. If a primitive ether has turned into the cosmos with all that inhabit it, this evo- lution was possible only by the constant addition of increments which, though singly so inappreci- able as to pass for nothing, are in their aggregate so infinite that they constitute everything but ether. Pow^er adequate to the result there must liave been ; and it makes no difference whether it be " concentrated on a moment or distributed through incalculable ages." And it surely is, as Dr. Martineau has so happJy observed, " a mean device for philosophers thus to crib causation by hair's-breadths, to put it out at compound inter- est through all time, and then disown the debt." • The Metaphysics of Darwinism, 99 Tliis jugglery with causality, as though in time everything could be got out of almost nothing, is the besetting sin of Darwinists. In Darwin him- self it takes the form of a dissolution of design into chance. In spite of his own admission that variations are determined by the nature of the organism, and that the ancestral organisms were divinely created and stocked with all the poten- cies that subsequently unfold theniselves, the whole tone of the " Origin of Species " implies that organic nature has been blindly shaped by the mechanical operation of physical agencies, that instincts, functions, organs, and constitutions are but special iiistances of order that survived after the collapse of innumerable instances of disorder, which the reckless gambling of natural forces has been continuously producing since the first dawn of life upon our earth. The normal develop- ment seems a special case among a thousand. Instead of design, there is only a happy hit amid countless failures. Or, as Lange, rendering Dar- win, graphically illustrates the point : You would not see evidence of purpose, much less of higher wisdom or transcendent cleverness, in the conduct of a man who, to kill a hare, fired a million pis- tols in all directions over a vast meadow ; or who, to enter a locked room, bought ten thousand loo Teleology in Darwinism* W i t >.:■ r»i; ,Mll II I inndoin keys and made trial of them all ; or wlio, to have a house, built a city and turned the su- perfluous houses over to the mercy of wind and weather. Thus the conception of design, which Aristotle required for the understanding of all nature, and which Kant could not dispense with in reflecting upon organisms, is declared at last, by the Darwinist, useless in science and unwarranted in philosophy. And the famous argument from final causes, which Paley illustrated from the adaptations of a watch, seems to collapse at the touch of Darwinism. " Suppose," says an emi- nent interpreter of that theory, " that anyone had been able to show that the watch had not been made directly by any person, but that it was the result of the modification of another watch which kept time but poorly, and that this, again, had proceeded from a structure which could hardly be called a watch at all, seeing that it had no figures on the dial and the hands were nidimentary, and that, going back and back in time, we come at last to a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable rudiment of the whole fabric. And imagine that it had been possible to show that all these changes had resulted from a tendency in the structure to vary indefinitely, and, secondly, from something in the surrounding world which helped all van- The Metaphysics of Darwinism, loi ations in the direction of an accurate time-keeper and checked all tlioso in other directions — then it is obvious that the force of Paley's argument would be gone." Does, then, the doctrine of descent and Dar- winism give the death-blow to teleology ? This is a question of vital importance for metaphysics and ethics. And it is not too much to say that the essential philosophical significance of Dar- win's work lies in its extra-scientific attempt to explain the adaptations in plants and animals as the blind outcome of purely mechanical causa- tion. Full of admiration for those exquisite adaptations of one part of the organism to an- other part, and of one organic being to another being, as well as of all organic beings to the phys- ical conditions of life, Darwin, after studying them with marvellous insight and patience, pro- nounces them all results of *' nature's power of selection," of the struggle for life and survival of the fittest, among the innumerable combinations that have happened to arise. Now, before inquiring into the warrant with which fortuity is here substituted for design, two preliminary remarks suggest themselves. The first is that the doctrine of fortuitous combina- tions is not the outcome of modern evolutionary \h ■^^ lA $; at I P M m '■ f . . .■ V ■ ■ ; I02 Evolutionism formerly TeleologicaL science, but the undeinonstrated postulate of every merely mechanical philosophy. It is as old, therefore, as materialism ; and the Greek atomists expounded it as skilfully as the mod- ern English biologists, who, in fact, as we have already seen, were in this respect clearly antici- pated by Empedocles. Matter first, atoms first, blind, groping mechanism first : that is the alter- native which the history of speculation has al- ways offered to the philosophy that holds intelli- gence to be the jprius and nature but a means for the realization of divine ideas. If Darwin- ian science tends to assimilate the former, it is, I hope to show, equally compatible with the lat- ter. At most you can only claim that it stands Janus-faced between dvdy/crj and voC?, indecisive whether in the beginning was tvxv or in the be- ginning was the X0709. The second remark is that the doctrine of evolution, previously to the form it has recently assumed at the hands of the empirical philoso- phers of England, was not, as Janet has observed, usually opposed to the teleological, but to the me- chanical, conception of the world. It was a theory of development from within, and in direct con- trast to every theory of agglomeration from with- out. Leibnitz is the father of modern evolution- K A ' TAe Metaphysics of Darwinism. 103 ism, ilie foundations of which were laid in his law of continuity, his theory of insensible percep- tions, his principle of the infinitely little, and his profound insight into the truth that " the present is big with the future." And yet the evolution- ism of Leibnitz implies final causes, and is char- acterized by its antagonism to ihs geometrical mechanism of Descartes and Spinoza. Schelling and Hegel were evolutionists, but as remote from the mechanism of the Fi-ench school of their day and the English school of ours as they were near to the hylozoisi of the ancient Greek cosmologists. Evolutionism, then, is not mechanism. Nor, as I think it can be shown, does the Darwinian doc- trine of descent with modifications necessarily imply fortuity. Perhaps nothing in the " Origin of Species " has lent more color to that view than the account given of the formation of the eye and of the origin of the peculiar instinct of the cnckoo. And we may he sure that if not here, then nowhere in Darwin, does the fortuitous really play the role of a veritable artist, a deus absconditus, a creator of order and design. It is well known that the European cuckoo lays her eggs in other birds' nests. The American cuckoo, however, makes her own nest. But in rare instances she has been known to follow the & IJ "M ii rfsf ; !;t! ■ 1. 104 Instinct of the Cuckoo, example of the European enckoo. From this fact Darwin undertakes to derive the origin of the nnique instinct of the latter by means of nat- ural selection. " Suppose," he says, " that the ancient progenitor of our European cuckoo had the habit of the American cuckoo, and that she occasionally laid an Q^ 1 1 1 2 Variations not Indefinite, Bcnsitivity at BOino spot of the skin of our sight- less ancestor might have developed into any- thing else than an eye ; and it is solely owing to tlie fact that other combinations, iniiumerablo and heterogeneous, could not hit upon a stable equilibrium in relation to the environment that an eye happened to be set up at all. In this view, natural selection is only a learned name for chance. And so intei-preting it, Lange, as we have seen, ridicules teleology, and the design-argument of Paley is declared by Huxley forever obsolete. But we now know there is no scientific warrant for this philosophy of chance. No organism varies indefinitely. " A whale," says Professor Iluxlev, " does not tend to varv in the direction of producing feathers, nor a bird in the direction of producing whalebone." And, as we have al- ready seen, other authorities join in the denial that variations are every-sided and indifferent. Further, the same scientists assure us that the " importance of natural selection will not be im- paired " by this view of variations. But if so, natural selection is manifestly not wedded to ;hance, and not incompatible with design. Kay, it seems to presuppose design; since develop- ment takes place along certain predetermined lines of modification, and natural selection only j'l ■;:i The Metaphysics of Darwinism, 113 weeds out tlie inferior competing forms. The skin-spot that develops into an eye, and the re- volving barrel that could develop into Paley's watch, both presuppose a tendency to definite variations; and this being confirmed by the latest evolutionary science, as we have already seen, everything is conceded that the teleologist demands. Natural selection as little implies for- tuity as it excludes reason. Its alliance with an irrational and mechanical philosophy is due merely to a historical accident. The scientists who first ardently embraced the doctrine, and burned with missionary zeal in promoting it, happened for the most part to favor, or to seem to favor, a materialistic metaphysics. And this, in conjunction with the undertone of kindred speculation we have already noticed in Darwin himself, led inevitably to a coalescence of the new science with the old philosophy. The union was allowed to pass unchallenged by the first assail- ants, who were more bent upon disproving natu- ral selection than keen in distinguishing between scientific hypotheses and metaphysical specula- tions ; and it is still all but universally believed that the biology of Darwin is inseparable from those mechanical and materialistic schemes of the universe into which it has been fitted by the ingeni- 8 i I 114 Fortuity not Involved, \ -ii 0118 labors of evolutionary teachers in Enrope and America. That there is no necessary connection, however, between the two, that Darwinian science is independent of this philosophy of mechanism and fortuity, has, I think, been convincingly estab- lished in the course of the present examination. The determination of the general philosophical significance of Darwinism is a considerable step towards the solution of our ethical problem, for which, indeed, it was an indispensable precondi- tion. Kvery system of ethics is affiliated to a metaphysics, expressed or understood ; and every system of metaphysics carries with it a definite ethics. The moral philosophy of Kant could not be gre^^'^'^ upon the mental philosophy of Hume ; and thb • First Principles " of Spencer would never blossom into the " Sermons on Human Nature." On the other hand, the mechanical conception of the world has always engendered a utilitarian theory of morals. But if, as we have shown. Darwinian biology does not imply the philosophy of Democritus, it cannot, at least through that channel, conduct to the ethics of Epicurus. Are morals, then, in any way affected by the doctrine of natural selection ? To this question an answer is attempted in the following pages. CHAPTER IV. DARWINISM AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF MOIIAT.K. It is important to fix accurately in mind what tlie subject of the present chapter is. With Dar- win's own ethical views and specnlations we have now nothing to do, though the exposition and ex- amination of them (both in themselves and in re- lation to his natural science) must form the topic of a later chapter. Just at present, however, our inquiry ia of a more general character. We want to know whether, the Darwinian doctrinejjf jeso? lution beijig assumed, it entails any_partic:i]ar t\ieorj^ji!LjaiorB}B. Or, since natnral selectio n is the essence of the Bcientific adiievement of Dar- win, we^ liaye simply to ask. Does nat ural sel ec- tion invnlvgjjT^ indifiate p, definite t ype of et.hic ay 60 that acceptance^qf.Jhe_oua_lQgicalIy-nficessl- tates acceptance ofjthe_otlier ? This question, it is' OBVIOUS, is not identical with an inquiry into Darwin's own moral pystem, which, though de- pendent upon some philosophical principle, may r !i . if 5 ii . r ! i I 1 16 Natural Selection in Morals, be absolutely disconnected with the hypotheses of biology. Leaving Darwin the moralist, therefore, wholly aside, we would fain settle whether Parr win the naturalist, in establishing the function of natural selection, thereby pred[etermined ethics to a particular form or invested its phenomena witlta^newcast. of Iboi^ And this point can be resolved only by ignoring the uncritical assump- tions of the school and undertaking afresh an in- dependent consideration of the facts and analysis of the notions which the Darwinian theory in- volves. That theory, as already expounded, consists essentially of two moments — the struggle for life and the survival of the fittest. The former con- nects it historically and logically with Malthusi- anism, and may be considered as an applica- tion of the famous doctrine of population to the whole organic world. That is to say, the strug- gle for life follows inevitably froii the enor- mous increase of living beings beyond the means of subsistence, as first pointed out in the case of man by Malthus. This debt to the national po- litical economy Darwin has openly ackn;;wledged. But it has not been observed that the other mo- ment of his theory — the issue of the struggle — waB conditioned by a conception borrowed from Darwinism in Ethics. it; the national ethics. He remembered distinctly, as he wrote Haeckel, how on reading Malthus's "Essay on Population" the thought of a uni- versal struggle for existence first flashed upon his mind. But he could not remember, so early, so gradual, so subtly pervasive is the entrance of eth ical ide as, when he had become inoculated with the national utilitarianism. Yet it can scarcely be doubted that it was from this source he ex- tracted the ii Qtion of utility as determinator of .^he issue of the combat for existence. No one uninfluenced by the ethics of the school of Hume and Bentham would have ventured to interpret the evolution of life as a continuous realization of utilities. And yet the s urvival of th e fittest, by which, a ccord ing to Darwin, development is ef- fected, just mean g_jthe preservation of the most t^a^tf^jaodiJications of structure or habit. " Any being, if it vary, however slightly, in any man- TiQY prqfitahle to iUelf^"* says Darwin, "will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be natu- rally selected." Or, in other words, before the operation of natural selection there must be a utility of some kind on which it acts. What is useful is preserved, what is harmful is destroyed. "Nature cares nothing for appearances, except in so far as they may be useful to any being." V lit w 1 18 The Moment of Utility. Thus, as you dig down to the roots of existence, you find it draws its vital sap from utility. " Natural selection acts solely by and for the good of each." It may " produce structures " for the direct injury of other species, but never for their exclusive advantage, ^ith certain excep- tions that can ^2 explained, the structure of every living creature as well as every detail of that structure " either now is, or was formerly, of some direct or indirect use to its possessor." Similarly, the instinct of each species is useful for that species, and has never been produced for the ex- clusive benefit of another species. Could these propositions be refuted, " it would," says Darwin, "annihilate my theory," for structures and in- stincts could not in that case be the product of natural selection. The_jiurvivy_jif__±he_fittfi8t implies an_antecedent utility— a modification jid- vantageous to the individual or, it may be, to the community of which it is a member, but never directly and exclusively to others _^jM)nd__tliifl ^ale. Natural selection i«8ts_iipon_a-biological iiHlihariftnifimj whi priori intuition. Moral obligation presents a greater difficulty ; and evolutionary moralists of the school we are now considering have had to fall back upon the answer of the ordinary utilitarians. They ascribe the sense of obligation to the effects of the legal and social sanctions with which certain kinds of conduct are visited. Moral motives being at first inseparable from political and social motives, they have been permeated with that con8CH)usne8s of subordination to authority which naturally arises \ •• » 1^ i ji 132 Account of Obligation* out of the relation of subject to ruler and of in- dividual to tribe. The coerciveness which now forms so important a constituent in our conscious- ness of duty is a survival of the constraint with which primitive man was forced by external agencies into certain lines of conduct and deterred from others. And hence it follows that, as morality is differentiated more completely from the legal, political, and social institutions in which it originated, the feeling of obligation generated by them will gradually fade away. Thus the evolutiono-utilitarian account of obligation dis- covers it a transitional feature in the process of human ^^ moralization," and this essentially is all that it adds to the theory of Mill and Bain. This newest theory of morals, here too briefly outlined, embraces in its range the entire province of moral conceptions and sentiments. But from what has been said the general character of the system will be readily discerned. It is simple, intelligible, and even plausible. That it should have proved fascinating to all, and irresistible to many, of the generation that lias so long listened to it with an ardor brooking little distraction from other theories, cannot be a matter of surprise to anyone who has duly considered the facts with which the theory is associated. Borrowed, as \\ ^ I , Darwinism in Ethics* -i^lZ they are, either from observation or from well- established sciences, and fitted ingeniously into current evolutionary ethics, they seem to be an organic part of the structure ; and the question of otherwise explaining them is not likely to be raised. Conversely, the full implication of the principles upon which they are here grafted has been left unexplored. And thus, while the new ethical philosophy has been widely accepted, a determination of the bases on which it really rests still remains to be made. This want we must now attempt to supply. In the first place^ then, evolutionitry ethics, as hitherto presented, takes for granted the deriv- ative character of morality. I say " as hitherto presented," because I hope to show in the sequel that there is nothing in the notion of develop- ment when applied to morals which necessitates, or which even warrants, the assumption. But our exponents of evolutionism happen to have been trained in the school of Epicurus, Hume, and Bentham, and it is not, on the whole, very sur- prising they should have carried the old leaven into the new teaching. What is surprising is the assumption, so coolly made, that the theory of evolution in some way vouches for the utilitarian- ism om* moralists associate with it. As though a w 134 First Assumption, « follower of Plato or Kant, for example, could not be a Darwinist in science ! Is it forgotten that, even if goodness be an end in itself — the sole end worth living for — it still remains true that hon- esty is the best policy, that honest acts are the most advantageous acts, and that they will ac- cordingly be preserved through natural selection in the struggle for existence ? All that natural selection requires is that something shall be use- ful ; what else it inmj he, what other predicates it may have, wherein its essence consists, natural selection knows not and recks not. Be virtue a proximate end or an ultimate end, natural selec- tion tells us it will be preserved and perpetuated if it is useful ; and it tells us no more. It is, accordingly, a gratuitous assumption which our exponents of evolutionary ethics make, when they decline to allow more than a merely relative value to morality. And as their position derives no support from evolutionary science, so is it exposed to all the objections which moralists, voicing the universal consciousness of mankind, have brought against it, from the time when Aristotle asserted that virtue has no extrinsic end (toO koKov iveKa) to the time when Kant pro- claimed the absolute worth of a good-will. In the second place, the current expositors of I Darwinism in Ethics. 135 evolutionary ethics having made the radical as- sumption that moral laws are not categorical im- peratives which command unconditionally, but hypothetical imperatives which prescribe means to the attainment of some end, they cannot escape the problem of determining wherein consists that ultimate end, conduciveness to which alone gives morality its worth and obligation. Nor, in gen- eral, has the school been dismayed by the mag- nitude or the obscurity of this problem. Possibly it has not fully realized that the question is noth- ing less than an inquiry into the highest good for man or the supreme end of human endeavor. Be that as it may, one cannot but be interested to find that, in spite of the distrust of reason generated by modern theories of knowledge, our evolutionary thinkers dare to face the problem which, in undisturbed consciousness of reason's might, ancient philosophers put in the foreground of their ethics. Even in an age of agnosticism thoughtful men come round to the sphinx-riddle, What am I here for ? what is the end of life ? The question may not, it is true, take precisely this form in the mouth of a modern evolutionary moralist, but that, after all, is substantially what he is bent on discovering and what he must dis- cover — must^ if his thesis is to be made good that .-^A \ \ 136 Second Assumption, \ i! morality is only a means to something else. And there is no logical reason why he should not appropriate the Aristotelian solution that man'8 highest good consists in the most perfect rational activity, that his supreme end or function is to inform life with reason and make his entire being the embodiment of reason. But, as a matter of fact, most typical evolutionary moralists have selected a very different ethical end — pleasure. They have maintained with Mr. Spencer that *'the good is universally the pleasurable," and that conduct is made good or bad solely by its " pleasure-giving and pain-giving effects." Still the evolutionary moralist, even of the de- rivative school, is not necessarily committed to this solution of the problem. He may doubt that the supreme end of life is to get and to give the greatest amount of pleasure. And appropriating the language of that Rabelaisian description of Carlyle's, on which Mr. Spencer has poured forth eloquent objurgation, our doubter may question whether the universe is merely "an immeasur- able swine's trough," and whether "moral evil is unattainability of pig's-wash and moral good attainability of ditto." For certainly the hedon- ist cannot, in the absence of antecedent obliga- tions which this theory excludes, but deem hi% Darwinism in Ethics. ^Z7 own pleasure the highest good ; and whether ac- cepting or not the psychology of the school which teaches that nothing but one's own pleas- ure can he the object of desire, he will acquiesce in the ethical dictum of Bentham, that " to at- tain the greatest portion of happiness for himself is the object of every rational being." But as soon as this opposition between his own pleas- ures and the pleasures of others is brought dis- tinctly into consciousness, and the formei recog- nized as the end, the impossibility of constructing an ethic on this basis is manifest. There is no way across the chasm that yawns between " each for himself" and "each for others." And if man be merely a pleasure-seeking animal, you but mock him when you enjoin him to promote the happiness of others. Accordingly, a sincere and logical utilitarian who felt with Mill, that the spirit of his ethics was that of the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, would drop altogether the notion of pleasure, which has hitherto filled the system with inconsistencies, and allow the ethical principle, thus freed from the accidental setting of a psychological hedonism, to proclaim itself as the greatest good of the greatest num- ber, or, better still, as the well-leing of society. Whatever be the content of that well-being (and 138 The End Pleasure or Good? there is much in it besides pleasure), it, and not happiness either of self or others, is the end which utilitarianism pure and simple, the utili- tarianism of Mill divorced from his more than dubious psychology, might set up as the ultimate end for every moral agent. And this, in fact, is the supreme principle of the ethics of Darwin, though he directs attention rather to the gene- sis of moral rules than to the reason for our ob- serving them. And though Mr. Spencer is too strongly influenced by the national ethics to fore- go the final i-eduction of morality to pleasure — and even the agent's own pleasure — he yet main- tains that those acts are good which conduce to the welfare of self, of offspring, and of soci- ety. The same end is recognized by Mr. Leslie Stephen in his explanation of moral rules as means of social preservation ; yet Mr. Stephen has not been so unfaithful to what he calls his own " school " — Bentham, Mill, etc. — as to sep- arate its psychology of self-seeking from its ethics of self-sacrifice. When this divorse does take place, however — and already it is heralded in Darwin — there will be no longer in this respect a fundamental oppo- sition between evolutionary ethics and common- sense morals. Attempts to patch up a truce, on ' n :«[ \ Darwinism in Ethics, 139 ■ the assumption that pleasures might through heredity be transformed into duties, have utterly failed. But the simple recognition of the wel- fare of society as an ultimate end is not to go outside of morality to find a reason foi' it, against which the intuitionist has always protested. It is to take one virtue, already recognized by the in- tuitioiil::^, for the whole of virtue. And to that extent the two schools are in essential agieement. A difference, however, appears when you inquire if there are not virtues which the general formula of promoting the well-being of others does not embrace. Common-sense seems to eay there are other duties as original, as self-evident, and as obligatory, as benevolence. And it does look ra- ther incredible that every man should be an end to others and not to himself. We do not easily rid ourselves of the conviction that goodness con- sists rather in the realization of a certain type of character in ourselves than in the performance of any external actions, though of course conduct promotive of the welfare of others would be one necessary outcome of the character thus indi- cated. I come now to a third characteristic assump- tion of current evolutionary ethics — the fortuitous origin of morality through a process purely me- 140 Third Assumption. chanical. This maRt, I think, be regarded as the fundamental tenet of the school ; but in England, at least, it seems to have been taught with all the reserve of an esoteric mystery. The accredited expounders of the subject have in their exoteric writings enveloped this point in such a wrapping of extraneous discussions that even a master in ethics like Professor Sidgwick has hazarded the declaration that evolution, however con- ceived, can make no difference at all in our ethical theories. But, with all deference to so eminent an authority, I hold that if this mechan> ical conception of moral evolution be conceded, the question of an ethical end — of what we ought to aim at — becomes unmeaning, since there cannot, in a literal sense, be any ends or aims for a being conceived as a mere mechanism, even though its random acts have through natural selection been solidified into habits, and habits, on the super- vention of consciousness, been reflected as rules. And this interpretation of evolution would be as fatal to practice as to theory. An individual who really accepted it must regard moral respon- sibility as illusory, as nothing but an echo of the modes of conduct which enabled the human species to overcome what was untoward to its progress or what threatened its extinction. For Darwinism in Ethics. 141 him tlie entire preceptive part of morality must eeoin a baseless imposition. And in the courage- ous language of M. Guyau he could recognize nothing but U7ie morale sans ohligation ni sano- tlon. No longer avT6vofio■]! 144 Connection with Metaphysics, relations, then approval of their life-conserving tendencies, or conscience. The moral faculty is the recognition of social relations ; it is the social instinct of the animals come to a consciousness of itself in man ; and this social instinct Is but the consolidation of habit, and habit is the pro- duct, through natural selection, of random actions struck out in the struggle for life. Thus the moral nature of man is merged in the mechanism of nature. The logical, as the chronological, jprius is, therefore, not intelligence, but mechan- ical action. The exegesis of Faust receives a startling illustration : Ln Anfang war die That. This moral theory, therefore, implies and rests upon a system of metaphysics. I do not think we can too often reiterate that current evolutionary ethics is the outcome of a very dubious physico- psychical speculation. From overlooking this connection the issue between moralists of this school and of other schools has not been clearly discerned, and the very heart of the question has been generally left untouched. I do not, of course, mean to call in question the results of the astronomical, physical, chemical, and biological sciences. What one teaches about the gradual formation of the universe, and another about the Darwinism in Ethics, irly tion ,of Ithe lical nal Ithe gradual development of organisms on our globe, I accept implicitly. But because minerals and plants and the lower animals appeared before man, I will not, therefore, hold that they were adequate conditions to his production, or that there is nothing in him that was not generated through actions and reactions between an animal system and its physical or social environment. Such a doctrine used to be called material- ism, but in deference to the feelings of specu- lative evolutionists the word has nowadays been dropped. All the objections, however, which were formerly urged against the derivation of mental and moral functions from material com- binations, however finely organized, are still valid against the evolutionary identification of intel- ligence with the modifications produced in the nervous and muscular systems from action and re- action between the organism and its environment. Man is later on the scene than the unintelligent organisms ; bui whence his intelligence we know not, unless it be the emergence of something new from the fountain of being, from the under- lying ground and sustaining cause of the whole evolutionary movement. Certainly it was not evolved by mere repetition of mechanical actions. "Were intelligence not at the heart of the cosmos, 10 ■MM V\ 146 Both Indefensible, it could not have turned up as the crowning glory of the development of life. The same position may be taken np in oppo- sition to the current evolutionary ethics. Biology warrants the belief that non-moral beings existed on our globe long before the appearance of the only moral being we know — man ; and natural selection explains the process by which the latter may have been descended from the former. But natural selection, as we have already shown, cre- ates no new material ; it merely sits in judgment npon what has already appeared. Given acts, or habits, or moral practices, natural selection is the name for the survival of the fittest of them, not the talismanic cause which originates any of them. However they originate, they must have a defi- nite relation to the constitution of the being that manifests them ; and to suppose that moral sen- timents, moral notions, moral practices, could be grafted upon a primitively non-moral being is, in the first place, to take a grossly mechanical view of human nature and, in the second place, to transgress the limits alike of natural selection and of evolutionary science. Yet this is what is done by our evolutionary moralists. A moral law, they tell you, is the formulation by intelligence of the social practices instinctively followed by the mora Darwinism in Ethics, 147 in ew to lid )iie ley the lora or less unintelligent ancestors of man, these prac- tices themselves having crystallized into habits from an inchoate chaos of random acts. "We have in the preceding chapter considered Darwin's derivation of instincts from casnal actions, and we h ive here only to inquire whether conscience is nothing but the social instinct illuminated by intelligence. "Were it so, we could not fail to ad- mire the manner in which morality was forced upon unwilling beings until at last appeared an intelligence capable of freely accepting it and heartily setting about its realization. As in the education of the iiuman race, according to Les- Bing, religion is at first revealed only tiiat it may ultimately become rational, why should not the practice of morality at first have been compulsory that it might in due time become free and gra- cious? But, after all, I believe an analysis of the facta will not suffer us to take this view of the providential government of the world. In the contents of the moral consciousness I find unique elements, unlike anything that went along with the earlier stages of the development of life, and absolutely incapable of resolution into practices useful for social survival blindly followed by the non-moral precursors of humanity. If the social instinct is, as the theory supposes, only a means v\ t' ■ \ 148 Wreck against Right and Duty, of preserving society, how could intelligence ever take it for more than that ? But in the moral consciousness of mankind there is olear recogni- tion of an absolutely worthf ul. And, in the next place, if this be denied, there remains one ele- ment in the moral consciousness that forever dis- tinguishes it from a mere intelligence -illumi- nated social instinct, namely, the sense of duty. Even if moral law be supposed nothing more than the expression of devices wrought out nncon- Bciously in the course of aeons, for securing the vitality and well-being of society, why do I recog- nize myself under obligation to observe the law ? This consciousness of duty, the most certain and most imperious fact in our experience, whence does it come if man have no moral fibre in his prim- itive constitution? On this rock the ethics of Kant, giving scientific shape to human morality, is firmly intrenched. And no better testimony to its security could be found than the shifts to which evolutionists are put when they attempt to resolve this element of the moral consciousness into race-accumulated experiences of utility. Mr. Spencer, indeed, supposes men to have been scared into moral obligation by the baton of the primi- tive policeman, the ostracism of primitive society, and the hell of the primitive priest. How a Darwinism in Ethics, 149 to to red ini- society could exist to deal out these political, so- cial, and religious sanctions, unless it rested on a mo7'al basis, the evolutionist does not explain. And one may, therefore, be pardoned for seeing here only another of the countless attempts to de- rive morality from ideas and institutions which already presuppose it. The va-Tepov Trporepov is the bane of evolutionary ethics. Natuially enough, the sentiment produced by the terrors of ancient law, politics, and religion, will decay with the cessation of its causes ; and as Mr. Spencer identifies this sentiment with moral obligation, one can understand how he reaches the paradox that the " sense of duty, or moral obligation, is transi- tory." In another way the same conclusion is reached by M. Guyau, who follows Darwin. Con- science is the social instinct, he says, and the scien- tific spirit is the great enemy of blind instincts ; it illuminates them, and in the flood-tide of light dissolves them ; what habit has made, reflection unmakes; and nothing can save morality when conscience has met the doom of every instinct — dissolution under scientific reflection. " Pan, the nature-god, is dead ; Jesus, the man-god, is dead ; there remains the ideal god within us, duty, which is also, perhaps, destined one day to die." But the irrefragable reply to these oracular prophecies is 150 spencer and Guyau on Duty, that tliey rest npon a misreading of the actual record. If moral obligation be the effect of cer- tain historical causes, it may decline with the de- cadence of those causes, and if conscience be a blind instinct, it may follow the supposed law of dissolution of instincts ; but the conditional ground of the consequence is in neither case established, in neither case does it rest upon evolutionary science, in neither case has it any antecedent probability apart from the cLjpi'xori prejudice of the utilitarian in favor of the derivative charac- ter of morality and the moral faculties. Instead of so accounting for the rise of a moral sense and moral obligation, as a kind of accident in our con- stitution, mankind (a few metaphysicians apart) persists in regarding them as of the very essence of human nature. The absolute " ought " cannot be the product of any experience with the primi- tive policeman or priest, since (apart from the fact that there would be neither without it) experience only records what is advantageous for certain ends and cannot, therefore, enjoin anything categori- cally. Hence the pretence of the evolutionists to have reconciled the experiential and intuitive schools of ethics cannot be sustained. Those pre- dicates of the moral law whicli, in the earlier part of this chapter, we found the cvohitionary theojy Darwinism in Ethics, 151 . claiming to account for — its simplicity, universal- ity, etc. — are not its essential attributes ; so that, even if the evolutionist's contention be fijranted, he leaves untouched the fundamental constituents of the moral consciousness — our sense of an abso- lutely worthful, the right, not merely the useful, and our recognition of its authority over us as expressed in the word " ought." For these ideas no experience can account, and every experiential theory virtually explains thein away as the indis- pensable condition to its own plausibility. How- ever long the process, whether extending through one generation, as the older utilitarians imagined, or through countless generations, as the evolutiono- utilitarians assume, there never will be success, as Lotze justly observed, in fetching into an empty soul, by means of the impressions of experience, a consciousness of moral obligation. Kor, in fact, does evolutionary science, relieved of the metaphysicrJ baggage with which it has hitherto been grievously freighted, require us to believe in the possibility of this desperate feat. It assumes that morality has been developed throiigh natural selection. And because natural selection presupposes a utility — a fittest that sur- vives — the evolutionists have fallen into the fal- lacy of supposing that morality was nothing hut 152 Their Fundamental Fallacy, '■^ . I a utility. That is the explanation of the plausi- bility of their ethical theory as expounded in tbo earlier part of the present chapter. And no other refutation, after all that has been said, need now be added except the reminder that natural selec- tion, though wide-awake to the uses of things, is blind to their nature and essence. It takes ad- vantage of the utility of morality, but no more determines its content and meaning than a posi- tivist who passes over the question of the essence of things. It acts upon germs of all kinds, once they have been produced and are moving through phases of development ; but it knows not what the germs are, whence they come, or what develops them. The whole question, so far as ethics is concerned, turns on the nature of those primitive modifications out of which morality has bee*^ evolved. But on that point evolutionary science has no answer of its own to give, and the blank has been filled by the preconceptions of evolu- tionary speculators. Subordinating, as the school has hitherto done, intelligence to mechanism, it has invariably sought the first germ of con- science in a random action that proved useful to the species in which it was struck out. We have, on the contrary, maintained that this hypo- thetical derivation passes over the very essence Darwinism in Ethics, 153 of the moral consciousness; nor can we imag- ine any other way of deriving it which does not already presuppose it. In opposition to this mechanical theory of conscience, wo hold that it is an ultimate function of the mind, a::id that in germ as in full fruition it must be regarded, not as an action, but as an ideal of action. The con- sciousness of right and wrong is underived, and, like intelligence in general, witnesses to a supra- sensible principle in man — a principle which the wheels of mechanism, grinding through eternity, could never of themselves produce. This view of the subject may be affiliated to Darwinism as readily as the other. For an abiding ideal of ac- tion is, to say the least, quite as beneficial as a chance action ; and wherever there is an advan- tage, there natural selection may operate. But natural selection does not determine the mate- rial upon which it works. Given the forms of primitive morality, whatever they be, natural se- lection only settles wliich shall perish and which survive. Its function is the negative one of sift- ing whatever has attained to positive existence. In the book of Job, Satan represents, according to Professor Davidson, the testing, sifting prov- idence of God : natural selection is the Satan of the evolutionary powers. Strange, indeed, that it I ii' i I r 1 ■; ' h] ^. I; fi' u 154 Further Objections, should ever have been mistaken for the povirers themselves I The ethical conclusions liero reached and co- ordinated with the doctrine of evolution and Dar- winism (which I everywhere take for granted) are so opposed to those of most evolutionists that some fallacy may be supposed to infect all our reasonings. After the evolutionary teachings of the last twenty years, it seems either blindness or disingenuousness to maintain that evolution leaves our ethical problems precisely where it found them. And so, in spite of all the preced- ing analyses and criticisms, the old objections are sure to recur. Does not the evolutionary doctrine of heredity imply that man is what his ancestry has made him, and so abrogate our be- lief in the freedom of the human will ? And does not goodness cease to be divine when you have explained moral laws as a statement of the habits blindly struck out and blindly followed by simian or semi-human groups in the struggle for existence ? If morality is mei-ely a formulation of the practices which, accidentally liit upon by some group of animals, made the group coherent, and thus enabled it to vanquish rival groups with different practices, would it not seem merely ac- cidental that justice and truthfulness are vir- Darwinism in Ethics, 155 tues, and not injustice and lying ? For if these vices, or others, had enabled those primitive semi- human societies to survive, they would not have been vices, but virtues ; for virtue is nothing but a useful means of social survival. Will not evo- lution, then, as thus interpreted, work revolution in our views of the moral nature of man, sineo it implies that morality is not grounded in the nature of things, but something purely relative to man^s circumstances — a happy device whereby man's ancestors managed to cohere in a united society and so kill out rival and disunited groups J Now, it is not necessary to deny either the so- cial utility of morals or the influence of heredity in order to show that, whatever the first appear- ance, evolution is not in reality revolution in tho sphere of man's moral nature. It is no doubt true that heredity supplies us with much of the material out of which we make our characters. But it is only by an oversight that we identify our character with the inherited elements out of which wo form it. As Aristotle prof our dly ob- served, nature does not make us good or bad, she only gives us the capacity of becoming good or bad — that is, of moulding our own characters. Emphasize as you will, then, the bulk of the in- heritance I have received from my ancestors, it \» 1 56 Evolution not Revolution, Btill remains true that in moral character I am what I make myself. On stepping stones of their dead selves men rise to higlier things ; and neither our ability to do this, nor tlie conscious- ness of that ability implied in the freedom of the will, is affected in any way by evolution. But surely, it will bo objected, evolution does mean revolution in our views of human nature, if it makes moral rules a mere socia) utility. I admit the conclusion, but reject its ^remises. For, as I have already urged, the facts of human life will not allow us to interpret morality as a mere accidental arrangement wliereby our animal ancestors came out victorious in the struggle for life. I do not deny that morality would, as a matter of fact, bo useful to any society practising it in the war of all against all in the struggle for life. That it is useful is clear from the readiness with which people follow Hamlet's advice to hia mother and assume a virtue when they have it not. But if morality be nothing more than mere social utility, a mere device which enabled man's ancestors to kill out rival groups, I fail to under- stand how there has arisen in man a conscience which makes cowards of us all ; a remorse which drives a Lady Macbeth to madness, and a Judas to suicide; a sense of eternal right so strong that Darwinism in Ethics, 157 no theory can niako us believe we are hoodwinked into righteouBuess, truth, and juutice, by the mere accident that lying, injustice, and unrighteousness were less useful in liolding primitive societies together and enabling them to kill out their rivals. And all this might bo conceded by the evolutionist, had ho not fallen into the fallacy of holding that, because virtue is socially useful, therefore it is nothing but a social utility. There are other things besides moralitv which favor the survival of primitive societies. We have already epoken of the advantages of an erect attitude and of a sound intelligence. Yet the evolutionist does not call these characters mere social utilities. The eye, for example, has no existence among the lowest animals ; yet when it does appear, its own new story is accepted as a fresh revelation of fact. Instead of describing it as an advantage in the struggle for life, the evolutionist sees in the new organ the possibility of a deeper com- munion with reality; and the more developed the organ the more valuable its evidence. The earliest eye was probably nothing more than a tingling sensitiveness to light and darkness. The most developed eye discerns a spectrum of seven colors ; and along with this advance it has also acquired the capacity of measuring distances, 158 Sense t Intellecty Conscience* U' J u; '^ m magnitudes, and situations. Both tliese func- tions of tlie eye \vere eminently useful in the strug- gle for life: they enabled their animal possessor to get food more easily and escape foes more deftly. Yet the evolutionist does not hold the eye is merely a utility. Bringing the surprise of something new and unexpected, the eye, he will recognize, is useful only because it makes us aware of fact. But if you accept the evidence of the eye when it testifies to the colors or sizes of objects, you cannot reject the depositions of con- science to the moral character of conduct and motives. This is a new mental function, and has the same claim upon you as the other. The va- lidity of the intuition, "Injustice is wrong," is neither greater nor less than the validity of the perception, " Snow is white." The vision of both the outer and the inner eye is useful, but useful simply because each gives us new revelations of reality. The same result is reached by comparing the deliverances of conscience with the discoveries of intelligence. The lowest animals have neither conscience nor reason. The infinite advantage of either we have already described. Even the germ of reason suffices to make man lord of crea- tion. Think only of the significance of the dis- Darwinism in Ethics. 159 ■ covery that twice two are four. An intelligence advanced to tliat point is on the way to geometry, trigonometry, and the calculus, to all those sciences whose application has changed the face of the material world. As the highest mathematics is useful to us, so was the first germ useful to our ancestors. But it does not, therefore, follow that arithmetic is merely a social utility. On the contrary, it is useful for the reason that it brings man into deepening relation with fact ; but iis validity is wholly independent of its advantage to mankind, and only the satirist could suggest that twice two would be five if that product were more advantageous to us. Arithmetical facts cannot be determined by a plebiscite of utilitarians. And the same is true of the de- liverance of conscience that injustice is wrong. Ultimate mathematical principles and ultimate moral principles have the same intuitive evi- dence ; and it is not weakened by the assumption that man owes his bodily organism to animals in which thei'e was no trace either of a moral or a mathematical faculty. Fact is fact ; and neither morality nor geometry ceases to be objectively grounded from the accident that our ancestors only gradually came to an apprehension of them. From all points of view, then, we are led to the 1 60 Evoluiiono-utiliiarianism, ji a ' same result. Evolutionary science in general, natural selection in particular, does not necessi- tate, or even indicate, a new system of etliics. It stands logically indifferent between intuitionism and utilitarianism, though from the accident that most expounders of evolution happened to be utilitarians there has arisen a belief that the two were in some way connected. In reality, evolu- tionary ethics, as hitherto expounded, is nothing but an arbitrary combination of utilitarianism in one or other of its forms with a speculative meta- physics which discovers the ground of mind and conscience in an antecedent physical or nervous mechanism. And as such it not only has no sup- port from evolutionary science^ but is at the same time exposed to all the objections which the common-sense of mankind has plways brought against every empirical theory of morals and every mechanical theory of intelligence. CHAPTER V. THE ETHIOAL SPECULATIONS OF DARWIN. From our consideration of tlie logical bearings of evolutionary science upon the fundamental questions of morals we now pass to an examiha- tion of the ethical speculations of Darwin. It will be advisable to begin with an exposition of his views, after which we shall have to inquire into their validity, as well as determine their re- lation to evolutionary biology. Aid, for reasons that will be evident as we proceed, the account of the moral faculties must bo supplemented by an account of the intellectual faculties. Darwin himself confesses that the greatest ob- stacle to the acceptance of the hypothesis which he had framed to account for the phenomena of life lies in the hig*^. " p.ndard of man's intellectual powers and moral disposition. And his endeavor is to show that the mental faculties of man differ only in degree, and not at all in kind, from those of the lower animals ; and that man's moral at- tainments are, under evolution, the necessary cor- 11 \'\ 162 Human Mind Evolved, H I relate of this superiority of intellectnal power. We have now to follow this process of affiliating human reason and conscience upon animal intel- ligence and instinct. On the origin of intelligence in our world Darwin disclaims the knowledge which some other evolutionary thinkers profess. In what manner the mental powers were first developed in *he lower organisms he holds " as hopeless an inquiry as how life itself first originated." He accepts the facts as he finds them, without pro- fessing to explain them. Animals are alive and intelligent ; the law of the evolution of life is known ; what if the development of intelligence were subject to the same law % If man, physically considered, is just a highly developed animal, is he more on his mental side? Is not his intel- lect, like his physical organism, the product of natural selection ? It must certainly be admitted that, wide as the interval confessedly is between the mental powers of the lowest man and the highest ape, it is not so wide as the interval be- tween the highest ape and a fish like the lamprey or lancelet ; and if this latter interval is filled by numberless gradations now in existence, it is not impossible that the blank between the human and the simian mind may once have been covered Fit Darwin's Ethical Theory, itj IS in 3d by intervening varieties which are now totally extinct. And so far as regards the action of natural selection in the evolution of mind, if, as must be admitted, such slight beneficial varia- tions of intelligence, as may now be perceived to occur among animals and to be inherited by their offspring, occurred in the past history of the world, and gave the individuals so favored an ad- vantage in the struggle for life ; then it cannot be doubted that natural selection, which issues in the survival of the fittest, must always have spared the most intelligent animals, and might, therefore, in the course of ages, by perpetuat- ing the transmitted intelligence of countless gen- erations of victorious combatants, have at last evolved such a combination of mental powers as enabled their fortunate possessor, the veritable heir of all the ages, to make weapons for the de- struction of his enemies, to use tools for procur- ing the satisfaction of his own wants, to utter articulate sounds for conveying information to his fellows, and, finally, with many additional accom- plishments, to come forth as man, the most domi- nant of all living creatures, the grandest intellect- ual and sole moral being in this terrestrial world. The probability thus established by analogy of general inference, that man's mind is simply a 164 Compared with Animal Mind, ;J!' m \w \i\ 1 1 % ' ! \ development from the brute's, differing from it only in degree, is strengthened by Darwin'e com- parison of the two, as manifested in all the forms of intelligence from blind sensation np to self- conscious reason. In the instincts of self -preser- vation, sexual love, and mother-love, man and beast do not differ. And since both have the same organs of sense, they agree in sensuous per- ception. Like man, too, the lowt r animals feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. They experience, also, the same emotions. With them, as with us, terror causes the muscles to tremble, the heart to palpitate, and the hair to stand on end. Courage and timidity we may see in our dogs, good and bad tempers in our horses, rage and revenge in monkeys and other animals. A dog may be as jealous as his mistress, and as fond of praise as the urchin she sends to school. African monkeys have been known to die of grief for the loss of their young. Great as the animal capacity for emotion there- fore is, it does not, however, exceed the concomi- tant intellectual power. All animals feel wonder, and many exhibit curiosity. Darwin gives an amusing account of the mental struggle which monkeys in the Zoological Gardens underwent, be- tween their instinctive dread of snakes and their Darwin s Ethical Theory. 165 curiosity to peep into a paper bag containing one, which he placed among them. Monkeys have also the faculty of imitation to a wonderful de- gree. And attention, the indispensable condition of all intellectual progress, is conspicuous in any animal waiting for its prey. Memory, too, they share with us. After an absence of five years and two days, Darwin's dog followed and obeyed him exactly as if he had " parted with him only half an hour before." The power of imagination is evidenced by the sounds and movements of ani- mals during their dreams. And of the highest faculty of the human mind Darwin says, " only a few persons now dispute that animals possess some power of reasoning." For example, the Vienna bear that deliberately made with his paw a current in some water, which was close to the bars of his cage, for the purpose of drawing a piece of floating bread within his reach, must have performed the same inductive reasoning as the lowest savage or the highest scientist. If it is said, in reply, that man alone is capa- ble of progressive improvement, this must be pro- nounced doubtful in face of the fact that old ani- mals ai-e harder to catch than young ones ; that birds in the course of a very few years cease to kill themselves by flying against new telegraph-lines; i I : » ' , '. 1 66 Use of Tools and Speech, that animals both lose and acquire caution in re- lation to man and other animals, and that our domestic dogs have attained to moral qualities un- known to the wolves and jackals from which they are descended. !Nor does the capacity to use tools imply, as has been urged, a fundamental difference between the mental powers of man and of other animals ; for the chimpanzee, in a state of nature, cracks a fruit somewhat like a walnut with a stone, and troops of Abyssinian baboons have been known to attack their foes, human and simian, by rolling down stones from the mountains upon their heads. So that apes as well as savages use weapons and implements ; and though savages now grind and polish stones for definite purposes of utility and defence, as did also their neolithic ancestors, the most primitive men who have left any record of themselves, the men of the palaeolithic age, had not advanced beyond the use of rough, ungronnd stones, which difPered from the natural tools and weapons of the apes only in being slightly though rudely fashioned. The possession of articulate speech is regarded by naturalists, like Huxley and Cuvier, and phi- lologists, like Max Miiller, as the grand distinctive character of man ; but Darwin holds that lan- m. Darwin s Ethical Theory. 167 guage has been developed from the cries and gest" ures of the lower animals. The difference lies solely in the infinitely larger power which man possesses of associating together the most diver- sified sounds and ideas. And this power, like language itself, has been slowly and unconsciously developed by many steps. The beginning of language was not improbably made by some wise ape -like animal imitating the growl of a beast of prey, for the sake of warning his companions of the expected attack — much as at present fowls give one another warning of the hawk, and mon- keys utter signal-cries of danger to their fellows. It is true that no existing ape uses his vocal or- gans for speech ; but this entitles us to infer only that his intelligence is not sufficiently advanced. The first speaking progenitor of man must have had far more highly developed mental powers than the chimpanzee or gorilla. But there is nothing in the faculty of articulate speech, so Darwin concludes, which offers " any insuperable objection to the belief that man has been devel- oped from some lower form." Neither, then, in the higher intellectual facul- ties nor in language, which has contributed so much to their development, does Darwin find anything to prove that the immense difference 1 68 Conscience, ;ri ■ between the mind of the lowest man and that of the highest ape is more than a difference of degree. The moral sense, however, he acknowl- edges is peculiar to man, and it affords, he main- tains, the " best and highest distinction between man and the lower animals." But even this faculty turns out not to be beyond the genetic power of natural selection. For the awful voice of conscience, which silenced the scepticism of Immanuel Kant and compelled him to a belief in the moral communion of man with a super- sensible world that pure reason knows not, seemed to the scientific epigon of British utili- tarianism only the articulate utterance of the dumb social instincts of the animal world as, in the evolution of animal intelligence, they have been developed, partly by expression in language, but especially by the ever-deepening conscious- ness, inevitable to an advancing intellect, of the greater persistency of social instincts in compari- son with all other impulses to action. The so- cial instincts of the animal are by the purging rays of ascending intelligence transmuted into a conscience. That sensibility of honor which feels a stain like a wound is only the far-off tremor of a sympathetic chord whereby some an- cestral group of animals, in the dissonant strug- Darwin s Ethical Theory, 169 gle for existence, became harmoniously nnited in a common and a victorious defence. "Any animal whatever," says Darwin, "en- dowed with well-marked social instincts, the pa- rental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense, or con- science, as soon as its intellectual powers had be- come as well, or nearly as well, developed as in man." Not that any social animal, with the same mental faculties, would acquire exactly the same moral sense as ours ; for the natui-e of the moral sense is determined by the conditions of the animal's life. If, for instance, men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, they would possess a conscience which required unmarried women, like the worker-bees, to kill their brothers, and mothers to kill their fertile daughters. Conscience, or the moral sense, being, according to this theory, derived from sociability, it may be worth while glancing at the operations of that instinct in the lower animals. That animals are social we may see in our horses, cattle, and sheep, in rooks, jackdaws, and starlings, in creatures as far asunder as ants and monkeys. The most common mutual service of the higher animals is to warn one another of danger. As danger-signal. ^'b. ^. o - V^». IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) ^ A A ^< «: 1.0 I.I m U^llS 12.5 |so "^ l^B 1.8 L25 i 1.4 ill 1.6 III Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14SS0 (716)872-4503 od of the community, that we must seek the origin of the moral sense, or conscience. Already in its persistency over other impulses we may discern a basis for the supremacy of the moral law. A permanent and strong instinct in the presence of an evanescent impulse awakens a feeling of obli- gation, which we express by sa^ • _ that it ought to be obeyed. " A pointer dog, if able to reflect on his past conduct, would say to himself, *I ought (as, indeed, we say of him) to have pointed at that hare, and not have yielded to the passing temptation of hunting it.' " But this preroga- tive of approving and disapproving is what con- stitutes man a moral being — the sole moral ani- mal. It is, as it were, a voice lent by intelligence to the dumb instincts and impulses to action that struggle in the breast of evei-y animaL Why, then, is conscience more than a simple expression of the motives at play ? If the instinct of self- preservation or of vengeance has triumphed over the social instinct, why does a man regret that he followed the one natural impulse rather than the other, and why does he f ui'ther feel that he ought hi Darwifis Ethical Theory, \ 73 to regret his conduct ? Here is a profound differ- ence between man and the lower animals; but Darwin finds an explanation of it in the immense- ly superior development of man's mental faculties, lieflection is an unavoidable incident of an in- telligence so highly developed as man's. Images of all past actions and motives would pass inces- jsantly through the mind of the earliest human being. With him, as with other social animals, the sympathetic instincts would be ever present and persistent ; while the inetincts of self-preser- vation and hunger, or the impulse to vengeance, are in their nature transitory, or scarcely ever present to consciousness. Accordingly, when an impulse to vengeance has mastered man's social instincts, he reflects and compares the now fad- ing idea of this impulse with the ever present social instincts. On one side he finds the gratifi- cation of vengeance at the cost of his compan- ions ; on the other, the outgoings of his own ever present spontaneous sympathy, re-enforced with the knowledge that his comrades consider it praiseworthy ; and the consequence is that that feeling of dissatisfaction which invariably re- sults from any unsatisfied instinct now arises, as soon as it is perceived that the enduring and always present social instinct has yielded to T? I =!i I" i: f^ 174 Aided by Reflection, some other instinct, at the time stronger, hnt neither enduring in its nature nor leaving be- hind it a very vivid impression. Thus retribu- tion comes when the strong impulse which im- pelled to revenge has grown weak in memory and seems as nothing before the ever-endnring social instincts and the desire to stand well W7th oth- ers. Hence regret, remorse, and penitential tears. And the poor sinner will "consequently resolve, more or less firmly, to act differently for the fut- ure ; and this is conscience, for conscience looks backward and serves as a guide for the future." This conscience, which thus springs by reflection out of the sympathetic impulses to action, is moulded by the approbation and disapprobation of others, the appreciation of which also rests on sympathy ; and after the power of .language has been acquired, the expressed will of the commu- nity naturally becomes the paramount guide to individual action. Habit further confirms the individual in virtuous conduct, until at last such perfect self-command is acquired that he yields instantly and without a struggle to his social sym- pathies and instincts, including his feeling for the judgment of his fellows. It is probable that the habit of self-command, so laboriously attained, may be transmitted to offspring. And thus man Darwin's Ethical Theory, 175 finally comes to feel, throngh acquired and, per- haps, inherited habit, that it is best for him to obey his more persistent impulses. These alone give meaning to the imperious word Ought, which ^^ seems merely to imply the consciousness of a rule of conduct, however it may have origi- nated." Such is Darwin's famous theory of the moral sense. Its significance for speculative ethics is a sufficient justification of the detailed account here given of it — an account I have striven to make accurate, often hy reproducing the very language of the original. The next considera- tion is, whether an unprejudiced seeker after truth can rest in Darwin's theory as a satisfac- tory philosophy of morals. One thing must be stated at the outset. Dar- win's treatment of the phenomena of morals dif- fers essentially, not only from his treatment of the phenomena of life, but also from his treatment of the phenomena of intelligence. Nor is the con- trast difficult to explain. Life, as all admit, is common to man and the animals ; and, as Dar- win adduced grounds for believing, there is no fundamental difference between human and ani- mal intelligence. Now, if Darwin's aim was to break down the wall of partition which unscien- I *f^ Darwin s Ethical Method Unique, I \ tific dogma had erected between the various species of living beings, it was not necessary for him to inquire into the absolute beginning of life or of intelligence ; and, as we have already seen, this problem he specifically set aside. It sufficed for his purpose that human and other animals were alive and intelligent, however they may have be- come so ; and the only question he set himself was i'low, beginning with the lower forms, the ad- vance in physical and psycliical organization had been effected. But even to this restricted ques- tion his answer is, as we have found, a mixture of science and nescience. By far the most impor- tant part of the process of evolution is veiled in inscrutable mystery. The development from lower to higher life and intelligence has not been sudden, but gradual, we are told ; yet we i.o more comprehend the cause of the one than of the oth- er, and ultimately fall back upon a belief that it is because organisms have innate tendencies to vary. But that assumed^ everything is assumed ; for natural selection, which Darwin discovered, is only the name for the survival of the fittest among all those forms which nature so mysteriously flings forth. What Darwin, therefore, maintains of organization and intelligence amounts only to this : given the lower phases, there is somehow Darwin s Ethical Theory, 177 a progress to higher phases, tlie best of which natural selection is constantly preserving. But in the moral world he finds no such common starting-point. He does not pretend that the phenomena of conscience, like those of life and mind, are alike exhibited by man and brute. Had he done so, he might here, too, have con- tented himself with the assertion of a develop- ment from the one to the other by means of natural selection, leaving the essence of the pro- cess as mysterious as he left it in the case of life or mind. And to this assertion, were it snp- ported by analogous facts, no one could have objected who accepts his theory of the evolu- tion of life. The germ, he might have said, however it originated, somehow grows into the various forms of animal conscience, and at last culminates in the conscience of man ; and the distance between the moral sense of the high- est animal and the lowest man, he might have repeated, is not greater than that between the lamprey and the dog. Unfortunately, however, for the consistency of this scheme, he finds no animal conscience. With the recognition of that blank, one might suppose the author of the theory of natural selection, with his habitual caution, would venture no farther. But the combined in- 12 n 1 i .( 178 Unlike his Scientific Method. fluence of an inlierited empirical psychology and ethics and a newly discovered evolutionary biology proved too fascinating even for the cautious, fact- revering Darwin. Since there is no animal con- science to begin with, and since man's has to be " accounted for, " one must be manufactured as its antecedent. Darwin accordingly takes sociability, \rhieh is common to man and beast, as one ele- ment, and for the other element, high intelligence, which is peculiar to man ; and from their combi- nation, by a kind of psychological chemistry, gets you a primitive conscience. Elsewhere the fa- mous scientist lay£ before you different species with their intervening forms, many of which he has himself actually produced ; and from a sur- vey of all the facts concludes there is no absolute distinction between them. But here he treats you to an imaginary psychology — imaginary facts and imaginary processes, which have no other warrant than his own preconception of the deriv- ative character of the moral faculty. The sure- footed investigator here roams at random over an impalpable void that offers no foothold ; and soaring in his flight, you may follow, but cannot catch him. He has deserted the kingdom of fact, which no mortal had ever half so well mastered, and, in an incautious moment, embarked upon the \\ Darwin s Ethical Theory, 1 79 and logy Eact- con- be its its ility, 1 ele- ence, )mbi- ,get8 le fa- pecies ch he a 8ur- Bolute reats facts other deriv- Bure- over ; and cannot f fact, stered, on the barren seas of specnlation, with all their shoals and quicksands, " where armies whole have sunk.'* This departure, in the case of morals, from the scientific method of the '* Origin of Species " is certainly very remarkable, though no one, so far as I know, has ever called attention to it. Had Darwin, I repeat, treated conscience as he treated the mental faculties, there would have been no ground of complaint. His mental philosophy may be summed up in the statement that the various grades of intelligence shade into one another so imperceptibly that it is not possible to distinguish them absolutely, even at the point where the ani- mal differentiates into the human mind — an inter- val which, moreover, is not greater than that between the intelligence of the fislx and the intel- ligence of the elephant. This may or may not be a tenable contention ; but it is at least supported by facts, and so amenable to refutation. It seems to me false from omissions rather than in the po- sitions it specifies. For, supposing the difPerence between the canine or simian mind and the mind of a savage to be no greater than the theory requires, there is, nevertheless, a pertinent distinction too significant to be passed over in silence — the one is capable of appropriating the accumulated knowl- edge, culture, and civilization of the most ad- 'I 180 Human and Brute Mind Different vanced spirits ; the other is not. This capacity for developnent should count for something in framing a genealogical table. And that I have not overestimated it is evidenced by the uncon- scious testimony of Darwin, who, speaking of the Fuegians as the *' lowest barbarians," yet adds : "I was continually struck with surprise how closely the three natives on board H. M. S. Beagle, who had lived" some years in England and could talk a little English, resembled us in disposition and in most of our mental faculties." As he is, the native Fuegian may not be much more intelligent than an elephant ; but then, he is capahle of becoming so much more I Still, whether Darwin is right or wrong in this matter does not now concern us. My present point is, that in his mental philosophy he makes no attempt to derive any of the mental powers. He takes them as he finds them, and studies their different manifestations and gradations. Man has more reason than the monkey : Darwin notes the fact without pretending to explain whence that reason came or what the essence of reason is. The lancelet has no imagination ; the dog has : Darwin recognizes the appearance of a new power in the more developed animal without professing to account for its entrance upon the field. Had mt oacity ing in '. have . Qiicon- of the adds : ie how M. S. England i lis in sulties." e much then, he in this present le makes powers, ies their Man has lotes the mce that eason is. dog has: ew power rofessing d. Had Darwin % Ethical Theory, i8i he in the same way disclaimed any knowledge of the origin and the essence of conscience (whether taking it for a uniquely human endowment or not) his moral philosophy would have had the same scientific character as his mental philosophy. Whether he held that the moral faculty first ap- peared in man or germinated in some lower ani- mal, his position would he of the nature of a sci- entific hypothesis which could he adjudged hy the facts. But when, in violation of his own in- variable practice elsewhere, he here professes to show us the non-moral material out of which the moral faculty was manufactured, and the very process of its making, we cannot resist the sus- picion that he has fallen upon the vain problem of trying, as Lotzo put it, to find out how exist- ence was made. This attempted derivation of the moral faculty by Darwin has, it will now be seen, no connection, either in matter or in method, with that biologi- cal science which is often designated Darwinism. We must distinguish, henceforth, between Dar- win the ethical speculator and Darwin the ob- server and intei'preter of facts in natural history. The lack of this distinction has led to endless con- fusion. Naturalists have supposed that Darwin's biology carried with it his theory of conscience, sasta 182 Conscience Inderivable. while moralists, repudiating the latter, thought thej were called upon to demolish Darwinian i^cience. What a chaos of absurd disputation has been thus engendered, the Darwinian literature of the last generation too abundantly evinces. These fruitless contentions arise from a miscon- ceptior which is clearly evident in the light of the preceding chapters. That mass of fact and theory which naturalists ^nd moralists have im^ ag'ned unitary is really twofold, with two distinct centres of gravity. Without maintaining, in gen- eral, in opposition to Mr. Herbert Spencer, that biology has nothing to do with ethics or ethics with biology (though this is not incapable of de- monstration), we do assert with the greatest con- fidence that, even if Darwin's theory of the origin of species and descent of man is sound, his specu- lations on morals will not, therefore, be sustained or confirmed, since the two rest on wholly dif- ferent bases, which are at no point coincident, and which no reasoning can bring together. The absolutely unique treatment which ethical phenomena received at the hands of Darwin may be still further illustrated in yet another way. It has been shown already that, in his own province of natural history, Darwin makes no attempt to deiive that life whose mysteriously expanding Darwin s Ethical Theory, 183 pliascs he seeks to arrange in a graduated scale. But besides mere life there is spirit, with its powers of apprehending the trne, the good, and the beautiful. And with regard to those mental powers which, conversing with reality, seize upon the truth, we have found Darwin registering their progressive manifestations without any pre- tence of accounting for their origin. The logical faculty, the mathematical faculty, he accepts as ultimate facts ; and whether they are comparable with animal activities or not, he recognizes the futility of pretending to show how they came into being. The same holds of his treatment of the sense of the beautiful. Without attempting a genesis of the aesthetic faculty, he contents him- self with observing, among animals in all stages of development, actual instances of perception of the beautiful. And a wonderful collection of facts he makes, as fascinating as novel and fresh I The observations constitute the decisive moment in his theory of sexual selection. As natural se- lection turns upon the success of both sexes in the struggle for life, sexual selection depends upon the success of certain individuals over others of the same sex in relation to the propagation of the species. Among nearly all animals there is a struggle between the males for the possession of J«B I II 1 . mm 184 Sense of Beauty Left Ultimate, the females. The slightest favorable variation would enp^^.a the victorious possessor to propagate it, be it a modification adapted to destroy rival wooers or to win the coveted female. To the first class belong those weapons of offence *.nd de- fence — the courage and pugnacity, the superior strength and build — ^in which most males differ from the females. Still more interesting is the second class. For courtsjiip among the lower an- imals is far from being simply a matter of brute force. The females appear to have much more freedom of choice than the women of the lowest races of mankind. The male, therefore, has not only to cc iquer his rivals, but to win the female. And the female, such is the animal sense of beauty, is most excited by, or prefers pairing with, the more ornamental male, or the male which sings best or plays the best antics. Hence, in a state of nature, the females by a long selection of the more attractive males have gradually added to their beauty or other attractive qualities. And Darwin shows in a most ingenious manner how, owing to female susceptibility to beauty, the charms of the males of the most different orders and species have been acquired through sexual se- lection. His illustrations fill a volume, but none of them are more delightful than those refer- Darwin s Ethical Theory, 185 3, in a ring to the ornaments of male birds — their brill- iat' tails, their combs and wattles, their gorsreous plumes, their elongated feathers, their top-knots, and so forth. There is no need, however, of here following farther Darwin's theory of sexnal selection. It is alone with the animal sense of the beautiful, on which the theory restfc; that we are now con- cerned. That faculty, be it observed, Darwin ac- cepts as he finds it, ready-made ; his task is merely to trace its operations in the various orders of as- cending life. What may be the nature and the source of the psychical organization that enables beings to perceive the beautiful, Darwin no more considers than the cognate question concerning the powers that apprehend the true. But when he treats of the faculty that discerns the good, **.«., conscience, he undertakes to show us whence it came and how it was made ! This unique inno- vation in method is tantamount to a transition from science to speculation. Darwin's conjectural ethics, then, we may now conclude, is wholly unsupported by his observa- tional biology. The next question is. How does the theory accord with the facts ? Surrendering the nnde- served prestige they have hitherto enjoyed from i M ' 1 86 Meaning of Conscience, association, through an illustrious name, with evolutionary science, are the ethical speculations of Darwin in themselves tenable ? To answering this question the rest of the present chapter must be devoted. The centre of gravity of Darwin's hypothesis is the assertion that conscience is the product of well-marked social instincts and advanced intel- ligence. Given these, " any animal whatever," so he tells us, " would inevitably acquire a moral sense, or conscience." This proposition we have now to examine. We want to understand how and why conscience is begotten of intellect and sociability. Conscience, as popularly conceived, is a term of somewhat vague signification. It comprises intellectual and emotional phenomena, standing at once for the power that discovers and enforces the good and avenges its violation or rewards its observance. It is aptly described, in Butler's fe- licitous confusion, as a sentiment of the under- standing and a perception of the heart. But what common-sense thus unites, analytic philosophers have disjoined. One school holds that conscience has a purely intellectual function, the recognition of moral law ; another insists it is notJaing but feeling, a pain more or less intense attendant on Darwin s Ethical Theory. 187 violation of duty. It matters little in what sense this or any other term is used in philosophical literature, provided only the definition be given, though there is a manifest advantage in keeping as close as possible to popular usage. What is of importance is that in fixing the connotation of words the thi gs to be named shall not be over> looked. And that all the moral phenomena re- ferred by the vulgar to conscience actually exist will not be questioned by any thinker (whatever his definition of the word conscience) who has ever perceived one course of action to be right and another wrong, who has recognized the au- thority of the right over him, and who, on defy- ing the right and choosing the wrong, has ex- perienced the pangs of remorse. As Darwin supplies us with a theory of the genesis of conscience, it is necessary to determine what he means by that term. Is the function of the Darwinian conscience the perception of right and wrong, or the recognition of the authority of the right, or the remorse that follows upon vio- lation of that authority? Is it any or all of these? To this question I find it difficult to obtain a definitive answer. Darwin was a naturalist ; and the natural sciences of which he was master do 11 I ' fii 1 88 Ambiguities of Darwifi s Usage, not stand in need of snch precise definitions as the more complex sciences of mind. Besides, for all but experts, definitions of mental phenomena are exceedingly difficult to frame. Perhaps we may thus explain the ambiguity in Darwin's use of the term conscifc.ice. In the fourth chapter of " The Descent of Man " we are told, in tlio opening sentences, that " the moral sense, or con- science, . . . has a lightful suprcmac;^ over every other principle of human action ; it is summed up in that short but imperious word ought^ so full of high significance. " But in a later passage we hear " of the moral sense, which tella us what we ought to do, and of the conscience, which reproves us if we disobey it." Further, conscience is described as an '^ inward monitor " urging towards ^'one impulse rather than the other," and again, in the same paragraph, as a " feeling of right or wrong." To complete the confusion it is once more coupled with remorse ; and the man who has been visited with this ret- ribution will, according to Darwin, " consequently resolve more or less firmly to act differently for the future ; and this is conscience, for conscience looks backwards and serves as a guide for the future." No logic, I apprehend, can extract from these Darwin s Ethical Theory, 189 these descriptions a consistent definition of conscience. Yet, without it how are we to test Darwin's the- ory of the origin of conscience ? One way is still open. Though we are unable to determine from Darwin's statements the character of the phe- nomenon to be produced, he yet furnishes us with the elements and the process of its production. These we may study in the expectation of dis- covering the nature of their result. Given socia- bility and intelligence as generating factors of a> (" conscience "), the problem is to find x, I repeat, we ought to know what is mean*, by con- science, since this is the phenomenon whose genesis we seek ; but, failing that, nothing re- mains but to assume the agencies and operations posited by Darwin, and then examine what they can produce and what they are incapable of pro- ducing. Turning to the famous chapter already men- tioned for Darwin's account of the subject, we learn there is a " main point, on which . . . the whole question of the moral sense turns. Why should a man feel that he ought to obey one instinctive desire rather than another? . . . Wliy does he regret having stolen food from hunger ? " This problem presents no peculiar difiiculty to ll^ ':i I ! 190 Genesis of Conscience, anybody not pledged to a system of derivative morality. The answer is simple enongli. Man perceives some desires to be higher or nobler than others, he recognizes an obligation to admit the better and exclude the worse, and he cannot defy this authority without incurring the penalty of remorse. Admit there is a scale of worth and authority among our impulses to conduct, as well as an order of intensity, aiid the whole difficulty vanishes. This, however, is what our current evolutionary school, for reasons more conceiv- able than cogent, has persistently declined to do. The undeniable deliverances of consciousness are in some way to be "accounted for," as though you could explain why the whole is greater than its part, or twice two four, or benevolence more excellent than envy 1 Let us consider Darwin's solution of the prob- lem he has raised : "Why does man regret that he has followed one natural impulse rather than another ? " In all such cases, according to Darwin, regret is the concomitant of a violation of the social in- stincts on the part of the selfish instincts. It can- not be due to the greater strength of the former, for, as a matter of fact, the social instincts in man are not stronger than the instincts of self-preser- Darwin* s Ethical Theory, 191 vation, hnnger, e^c; and were they Btronger, it is not easy to see liow they could ever have been overpowered by the weaker. But " the social in- stincts are ever present and persistent." And a being with mental faculties as high as man's can- not avoid reflecting upon past actions and motives, and comparing the s-'tisfaction of hunger, ven- geance, etc., at other men's cost, with the almost ever present instinct of sympathy, which " forms an essential purt of the social instinct, and is in- deed its foundation-stone." Now, such desires as hunger, vengeance, and the like, are in their nat- ure of short duration ; and after being satisfied, are not vividly recalled. Hence, when the images of these past and now weakened impressions are compared with the ever enduring social instincts, and with public opinion, the thief, or avenger, will feel as if he had been balked in following a pres- ent instinct or habit, and find himself the prey of remorse, regret, or shame. It is not conscience, therefore, as popularly understood, but only remorse, whose genesis Dar- win is really tracing. Does he succeed even in this limited endeavor ? The plausibility of the deduction is due to the assumption that *'the social instincts are ever present and persistent," while hunger, vengeance, 192 Fallacious Assumption* lust, etc., are not. What Darwin maintains about these last impulses is psychologically true : they may be readily and completely gratified, and nei- ther the attendant pains nor pleasures are sus- ceptible of vivid representation in consciousness. And, on the other hand, the influence upon the individual of the social organism or social factor seems scarcely capable of exaggeration to those who have taken to heari; the teachings of Herder and the great German thinkers of the eighteenth century, or of Comte, Mill, and Lewes in the nineteenth. Nevertheless, when the social prin- ciples of conduct are enumerated one by one, no one would venture to assert that compassion, be- nevolence, gratitude, justice, veracity, or humanity, is an " ever present aiid persistent instinct. " Man is moved both by egoistic ar i altruistic springs of action, and no psychology would imitate the Dar- winian irony of making the latter the more en- during. On the contrary, as in the Darwinian theory, the instinct of self -preservation comes earliest ; and as the filial, parental, and social in- stincts are derived from it by means of natural selection ; there would be groun ^s for maintain- ing that the one omnipresent and persistent im- pulse is the egoistic one of self-preservation. At any rate, it is only through the illicit comparison Darwin s Ethical Theory, 193 about , they d nei- e BUB- iBUeBB. yci the factor ► those Herder liteenth in the al prin- one, no 3ion, he- imanity, " Man )ring8 of the Dar- tiore en- arwinian 11 comes Bocial in- natural naintain- stent im- ;ion. At mparison of one whole class with some of the indi/oidudU composing another that Darwin wins a primacy for the social instincts. Compare compassion or gratitude with lust or hunger, and you would not say that the individual social impulse is more per- sistent or enduring than the individual selfish impulse ; or compare the whole class of social in- stincts with the whole class of selfish instincts, and, again, you find no difference in the times of their presence or persistency. Take, on the other hand, the entire species of social instincts and only two or three individuals from the selfish group, and, of course, you may predicate of the former a more constant presence and greater per- sistency. It is, now, by this utterly fallacious procedure that Darwin gains the fundamental proposition in his deduction of the moral sense (that is, as we have seen, remorse). Instead of granting that the social instincts exclusively are ever present and persistent, we must maintain they have no title to those predicates which can- not be urged with equal or greater validity on behalf of the selfish instincts. But even if Darwin's assumption that the social instincts are ever present aad persistent were con- ceded, it would not enabie him to educe con- science or remorse. For, suppose these instincts 13 194 . Further Objection, located in a being of high mental powers — and that is all the theory postulates — what is there to carry the non-moral possessor over into the status of a moral agent ? Evolutionists of the current school are apt to slur over this step, and the hiatus is not observed by their readers be- cause, for the most part, they fail to realize that the moral has here been made to emerge, not from an antecedent kindred ^erm, but from the ab- solutely non-moral. When Darwin tells them that a highly intelligent being, reflecting upon the past triumphs of lust, vengeance, or hunger, over more benevolent impulses, cannot escape the bit- terness of remorse or shame, they assent to the proposition as expressing a fact of their own ex- perience. But they overlook the all-important difference that they are already moral beings, and that the highly intelligent animal Darwin speaks of is not. Why, then, should this non-moral in- telligence experience remorse? The selfish in- stinct of hunger or lust had its way only because it was at the time stronger than the social check. And in this superior intensity a reflecting, non- moral being could not fail to find its justification. Had the more powerful impulse been restrained, there would have arisen (to appropriate language of Darwin's) ^^ that feeling of dissatisfaction, or Darwin's Ethical Theory, 195 eve the the and be- that Erom > ab- them nthe , over le hit- to the pu ex- ortant ;8, and pealss ral in- sh in- ecause check, non- cation, rained, gnage ion, or even misery, which invariably reenlts from any unsatisfied instinct." And as this misery is pro- portionate to the intensity of the impnise sup- pressed — greater when this is stronger, lighter when it is weaker — every reflecting being, unin- fluenced by moral considerations, and governed, therefore, only by a Benthamite calculus of pleas- ures and pains, would be driven to the inevitable conclusion, that true wisdom consisted in fol- lowing the strongest impulse (except when it might entail a future balance of pain — a con- tingency rarer for non-moral than for moral beings). The case may be represented as fol- lows : At a certain moment in the past, a selfish instinct, being stronger than a social instinct, was gratified by the corresponding conduct, and pro- duced a clear surplus of pleasure over the pain at- tendant upon the violation of the weaker social instinct; had the latter been satisfied to the suppression of the former, there would, for the same reason, have been a surplus of pain over pleasure. Tins actual state of things, now, can- not be altered by the most arduous reflection upon it. Hence those images of past actions and motives which, according to Darwin, incessantly pass through the minds of highly intelligent ani- mals must, so far as this particular case is con- r 196 No Escape From It, :.l i cerned, generate a pleasurable consciousness akin to that formerly produced by the remembered events themselves. The non-moral intelligent being, then, that followed the strongest impulse, be it an egoistic or an altruistic impulse, would have the best reasons for self-gratulation. One consideration, however, as ahvsady hinted, might suffice to give him pause. The strong^t instinct, though pro- ducing the most pleasure momentarily by its gratification, might not produce the greatest sur- plus of permanent pleasure. And if so, this would be a reason for a non-moral being sup- pressing it. But Darwin makes no such supposi- tion ; nor would it in the least serve his purpose. For his problem is to generate conscience, and he rightly saw that, though a non-moral being who preferred a momentary to a permanent pleasure iniglit, on reflection, deem himself short-sighted, imprudent, or even foolish, such a being could have no experience of that heart-breaking emotion of remorse which Darwin identifies with conscience. Darwin makes remorse the concomitant of the recollection of suppressed socid instincts ; yet in the results, actual or possible, entailed by the suppression we fiud no ground for remorse, while as regards the act of suppression, due as it was Darwifts Ethical Theory, 197 akin >ered that ;oi8tic best ation, ogive li pro- by its }8t sur- io, this Qg snp- upposi- mrpose. and be ng who >leasure [sighted, lid have ^otion of iscience. it of the ; yet in by the ie, while kB it was to the pleasure-giving triumph of a selfish in- stinct, we have seen that a non-moral being, re- flecting upon it, could have no other feeling than self-complacency. But (it will be objected) the non-moral being who formerly gave way to sel- fishness is supposed by Darwin to be, at the moment of reflection, under the influence of the ever present and persistent social instincts and sympathies ; and it is in their reinstalled light that the former outburst of egoism now appears shameful and fills the reflectiuj;; agent with re- morse. This supposition, which is manifestly borrowed from the experiences of a moral being, presupposes one of two conditions, either of which is absolutely destructive to the ethical hy- pothesis of Darwin. If reflection upon violated social instincts could engender such sentiments in a non-moral intelligence, either the reflection is very inadequate or a worth is attributed to the social sentiments hitherto denied them by the theory. Suppose the reflection thorough and complete, then what avail the solicitations of present sociability to color and distort the images reflection evokes? A developed intellect will not confound the present with the past, or fool- ishly dream that, because at this moment a tri- umph of the social instincts would be pleasur- 198 Egoism versus Sociability, n ^ n \ .1 'Ml! I able, it would always have been pleasurable in the past. It could not but recall that just as at pres- ent the social impulses happen to be dominant, so at other times hunger, vengeance, and lust hap- pen to be dominant ; and to slip the one force is as natural and as praiseworthy, from this non- moral point of view, as to slip the other. But the social instincts, says Darwin, are more present and enduring than the setfish instincts. Even if this contention, which I have already adduced grounds for rejecting, be for the moment con- ceded, it will not help out the demonstration. For you cannot argue that because selfish im- pulses do not come so often or stay so long as so- cial impulses, they have therefore less right to the field when they actually do put in an appearance. Granting that the times of sociability are greater than the times of selfishness, this time-measure does not explain why I feel remorse over acts of vengeance or robbery. And if the meaning is that I shed penitential tears over them solely be- cause I am at present transported by a wave of sociability, this would lead to the absurdity that when the egoistic instincts had the upper hand, reflection would then produce remorse for pre- vious acts of benevolence and compassion involv- ing sacrifice to myself I Darwin* s Ethical Theory, 199 the >re8- it,BO hap- ce is non- But esent ren if iuced ; con- •ation. h im- as 80- to the trance, rreater easure acts of ning is ely be- rave of y that hand, or pre- involv- Thorotigh-going reflection, then, "will not gener- ate remorse in a being that recognizes no differ- ence in impulses to action except degrees of dura- tion and intensi y. The Darwinian hypothetical moral ancestor does feel remorse. He must therefore have already arrived at a perception of the relative worth of competing springs of con- duct. What Darwin calls the bocial impulses this incipient moral agent already recognizes as higher and nobler than what Darwin calls the selfish im- pulses. The one has a claim upon him, the other has not. That claim, the mute though awful ap- peal of goodness to a free moral agent, he may defy ; but, unless his heart is hardened, that de- tiance brings the terrible yet blessed retribution of remorse. How all this is so, why all this is so, we know not. Voltaire's words deserve, in these days of derivative and genetic philosophy, to be written in letters of gold : " What inconsist- ency! We know not how the earth produces a blade of grass, or how the bones grow in the womb of her who is with child, and yet we would persuade ourselves that we understand the nature and generation of our ideas." Darwin attempts to derive remorse (which he calls "conscience") from measuring sociability against selfishness in the mind of a non-moral al .♦ ■! If 200 Conscience presupposed, being. The derivation, I think we have shown, is a failure. It becomes plausible only when we grant, as Darwin does not, though the reader generally does, that our hypothetical ancestor has an intuitive perception of the superior excellence of social over selfish instincts. And so it appears that it is this inderivable moral consciousness, this sense of right and wrong, this conscience, and not any psychological play of egoistic and altruistic impulses to action, that constitates at once the possibility and the foundation of re- morse. Darwin's derivation of it turns out a gigantic ^arepov irporepov. CHAPTER VL THE DEVELOPMENT OP MORA^ ffiEALS AND IN- STITUTIONS, WITH SPECIAL EEFEBENOE TO THE FAMILY. The history of moral ideals and institntions, though hitherto ignored by moralists, seems to me the most important topic in the whole realm of ethics. Therein is to be found, along with a fuller comprehension, the solution of many of those vexed questions which have never failed to stimulate, and have always baffled, the ingenuity of all the schools of analytic philosophers. To have aroused interest in a matter so significant is no trifling addition to the crown of Darwin's glory. But it was really almost by accident that Darwin stumbled upon the subject. As Saul, the son of Kish, was looking for his father's asses when he found a kingdom, so Darwin, the epigon of speculative utilitarianism, was casting about for supports to his more than dubious theory of con- science when his glance fell upon this vast, prom- ■^}^ Jii'P' if: i i 51 202 Darwin as Moralist ising, though yet uncultivated domain of histori- cal ethics. Indirectly, indeed, he suggested the way which a positive " science " of ethics would have to follow ; but for himself, he remained an ethical speculator of the old-fashioned type, with all the preconceptions and with the same compla- cent confidence o£ the derivative school whose traditions he liad inherited. But his procedure ' enables us to illustrate, i« a concrete instance, the difference between science and speculation in ethics. The observation and classification of ethical facts, whether manifested in the individ- ual or in the race, constitute the business of the " science " of ethics ; all else is hypothesis, specu- lation, fancy. The phenomena of the individual moral consciousness, Darwin presumably turned over to the writers of systematic text-books ; and the phenomena of the historical development of morality among mankind he drew upon only to illustrat6 his speculations on the origin of conscience — speculations which he followed his school in supposing the principal subject-matter of ethics. From infection with this speculative spirit evolntionaiy moralists have not yet recov- ered, and they still put upon us as " science " con- jectures and phantasies as far removed from fact as the republic of Plato or the paradise of Mil- The Evolution of Morality, 203 ton. This must serve as excuse for repeating here the main condusion of our first chapter — namely, that ethics, if it is to become truly a sci- ence, must shun the path of speculation and fol- low closely the historical method. The citation of facts from savage morality, though merely for purposes of illustration, consti- tutes, I have said, Darwin's most worthf ul contri- bution to morals. His specula^' ve ethics is, in- deed, generally supposed to be an organic part of that evolutionarv science whose basis he laid in biology ; but it has been shown in the preceding chapters that Darwinian biology is absolutely in- different to every philosophy, and has no more logical connection with the metaphysical and eth- ical views that liave been grafted upon it by Dar- win and others than with the opposite views. Further, it has been shown that, in themselves considered, Darwin's ethical speculations, whether judged by their internal self -consistency or their adequacy to the external facts, are wholly unsat- isfactory and untenable. To the arguments on which these conclusions were based we need not here recur. But another point remains, which might, indeed, be passed over in a mere examiuA- tion of Darwinism, but which, as it is suggested by Darwin's appeal to savage morality, canno^ be 204 History in Ethics, beyond the scope of our present inquiry, while it is, besides, of such transcendent significance for the future of ethics that I could not in any case decide to omit it altogether. I allude to the bear- ing of the history of morality among civilized and uncivilized races upon current systems of moral philosophy. What light does our present knowl- edge of the development of moral conceptions, ideals, and institutions among mankind throw upon that fundamental problem of ethical specu- lation, the nature of the moral law ? This question, unfortunately, has not hitherto been considered in exclusive relation to the his- torical facts. As was inevitable from the lack of a positive science of ethics, founded upon the act- ualities of history and of life, it was prejudged by theoretical moralists according to the specula- tive standpoints which they happened to occupy. Kow, as all the diversities of ethical thought may be reduced to two main types, represented respec- tively by the hedopi«4tic and the intuitive schools, the facts of historic morality were forced into the service of these opposing systems. Accord- ing to the one party, they showed that morality, in itself eternal and immutable, was universally recognized and practised among men ; according to the other party, they confirmed the theory The Evolution of Morality, 205 that moral laws were but the empirically estab- lished prescripts for securing the largest quantum of pleasure to the greatest number of individuals. It may indeed be questioned whether historical ethics ever really touches, much less confirms, the point which either of these parties has most at heart. If the main issue between them turns upon the question of the chief end of life, the summum honum, then whether it is pleasure, as the hedonist assumes, or goodness, as the intu- itionist assumes, cannot, I apprehend, be deter- mined by a study of the morals of savages and barbarians any more than by a study of the morals of Christians. And if the issue turns rather on the absoluteness or relativity of the moral law, then if by " absolute " is meant valid for all spirits, human and divine, and if by " rel- ative" is meant dependent upon circumstances, I do not see how comparative morals, in this case either, can decide the controversy. But if, dropping these speculative puzzles, we shift our position altogether and raise the simple induc- tive inquiry. What acts have men everywhere and at all times considered right or wrong re- spectively, and what acts have some considered right or indifferent and others w^rong ? tables of agreement and difference can be drawn up to ill, i 206 What it can tell Us, »h % bIiow what mankind at least has regarded as the essential content of the moral law (and some ex- planation might even be suggested of the diver- gence in the outlying area beyond this common circle), though we should still be unable to say whether the end of life was pleasure or some- thing else, or how this common human morality might be regarded by other spirits, as, for ex- ample, by God. For the rich harvest which this treatment of the moral ^eld is sure to yield wo shall have to wait until the spirit of science has exorcised the spirit of speculation from our con- tending schools of ethics. Only a single plot of the field has as yet been cultivated, and that not by moralists, but by anthropologists, philologists, jurists, historians, and observant travellers. I may mention especially the works of McLennan, Morgan, Tylor, Lubbock, Herbert Spencer, Sir Henry Maine, Robertson Smith, Hearn, Lyall, Letourneau, Coulanges, Schmidt, Ploss, and Lip- pert. The investigations which they have con- ducted, within recent years, into the origin and de- velopmert of the family relations constitute an important chapter in the yet unborn science of historical ethics. Among all the virtues, none is more sacred to Christendom than chastity, and none has been The Evolution of Morality, 207 snpposed more primitive in its history or intni* tive in its natnre. The views and sentiments en- tertained by all Christian nations toward it are expressed at once, witli accuracy of delineation and nobility of style, in a fine apostrophe in the fourth book of Milton's " Paradise Lost : " • " Hail, wpdded lovo, mysterious law, true source Of human offspring, sole propriety In Paradise of all things comm^tn else I By thee adulterous lust was driven from men Among the bestial herds to range ; by thee, Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure, Belations dear, and all the charities Of father, son, and brother, first were known. Far be it that I should write thee sin or blame, Or think thee unbefitting holiest place, Perpetual fountain of domestic sweets. Whose bed is undefiled and chaste pronounced. Present or past, as saints and patriarchs used. Here love his golden shafts employs, here lights His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings, Beigns here and revels ; not in the bought smile Of harlots — loveless, joyless, uncndeared, Casual fruition." In this sublime passage are voiced assumptions that were universal in Milton's time and all but universal to-day. It is implied that in the begin- nings of human life, wliile everything else was common, women were already individually appro- priated by men, or, in other words, that mo- h 208 Assumptions about the Family, nogynons and monandrous marriage obtained ; it is further implied that this is the only natural form of relation between man and woman, Hy- men excluding the very idea of casual connec- tion ; and it is finally implied that from this ex- clusiveness in " wedded love " alone could spring a tree of family relationship with its flower of domestic virtues. Whether these assumptions are facts, or uncritical dogmas having no other sup- port than the inartia of incurious tradition, is the first question we have to consider. And should it appear from the investigating torch of history that the assumptions are illusory, wo should then have to determine in what way the- ories of ethics were affected by the discovery. Having rejected Darwin's supposition of a meta- morphosis of the absolutely non-moral into the moral, it would be incumbent upon us to find some other interpretation of the late emergence of chastity, should history show that chastity was not at the first universally recognized as a virtue. The first scientific study of the history of mar- riage was made by the late Mr. J. F. McLennan in an interesting and highly original work, pub- lished in 1865 under the title of "Primitive Marriage," and republished in 1876 as " Studies in Ancient History." The object of the work is The Evolution of Morality. 209 to determine the development of conjugal rela- tions among mankind by an examination of the origin and meaning of the symbol of capture in marriage ceremonies. The next epoch*making work was Mr. Lewis II. Morgan's "Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Fam- ily," which appeared in 1871 in the " Smithso- nian Contributions to Knowledge" (vol. xvii.), and was afterward reproduced in a condensed and more readily available shape in " Ancient Society " (pt., iii., pp. 383-521). It is an attempt to trace the growth of the family by a compara- tive stud;' of the methods of reckoning relation- ship. These investigations into the early history of the family are in themselves so valuable, and in reputation so classic, that we cannot do better than set out with them. They give us facts and theories together ; but it will not be hard to sep- arate these and form an independent judgment on the amount of support the facts give to the theories. McLennan starts with the existence and preva- lence of the form of capture in marriage cere- monies. It must be a survival, he thinks, of a system of actual wife-stealing. If the members of a tribe were allowed to marry within the tribe— that is, in the felicitous mintage of Mc- U II 1 I' m \ ■*'fi M 2\o McLennan s Theory of the Family, Lennan, if the tribe is endogamovs — the symbol of capture could not conceivably come into being. But if marriage witliin the tribe were prohibited — that is, if the tribe were exogamous — and if a state of war usually prevailed between neighbor- ing tribes, as was the case in primitive times, each tribe could get wives only by theft or force ; and the reality of capture would, when friendly re- lations came to be estab^shed, degenerate into the form of capture. Now, it is a fact that ex- ogamous tribes exist and have existed. And of the prevalence of capturing wives de facto savage and barbarous tribes still furnish abundant illus- tration. It is also found that the rule against marriage between members of the same tribe coexists with the practice of capturing wives de facto and with the form of capture in marriage ceremonies. If, then, the capture of women for wives and, consequently, the form of capture in marriage ceremonies are to be lef erred to exogamy, what, we must next ask, is the origin of exogamy ? A survey of the facts of primitive life forbids the supposition that it originated in any innate or primary feeling against ma/riage with kinsfolk. It may, howcer, be connected with the practice of female infanticide ; and it was this, says Mc- The Evolution of Alorality, 211 Lennan, " which, rendering women scarce, led at once to polyandry within the tribe and the capt- ure of women from without" ("Ancient His- tory," p. 111). In the struggle for life the instinct of self-preservation triumphed over the love of offspring ; and while male children were reared to grow up as braves and hunters, female children, in youth as in maturity a mere burden to the community, were destroyed. And this disturbance of the balance of the sexes involved wife-stealing and polyandry. Another consequence, affecting ideas of kin- ship, must be noticed. In the earliest times, according to McLennan, the unions of the sexes were " loose, transitory, and in some degree pro- miscuous " (p. 131). There may then have been no perception of relationship, for relationship is rooted in a physical fact — the fact of consanguin- ity ; and this, like other objects of observation and reflection, was probably long overlooked. But when it was first perceived, the idea of blood- relationship was embodied in a system of kinship through females only — as was natural when pa- ternity was absolutely uncertain. Kow, however, when the original poly and rous and polygynous proTjiscuity was so far qualified, in consequence of the killing of female children, as that several i \ I! • h I Hi 212 Its Actual Facts, i ! li ."i'l! Illi men were assigned to one woman and she to them, exclusively, and when to this nidest form of polyandry succeeded that (practised by the Tibetans) in which the husbands are all brothers, it became for the first time possible to determine, if not the father, at least t^ o blood of the father; and as a consequence there began to emerge a system cl: kinship and inheritance through males, which received its full development when mar- riage became monogamous and paternity, there- fore, indisputable. How this new system of reckoning relationship adapted itself, in the case of exogamous tribes, to the practice of marrying within the tribe, which was permissible under the system of female kinship and had practically made the tribe endogamons, it does not concern us here to explain. We are interested in Mc- Lennan's speculations only in so far as they con- cern the forms of family relations and the mo- rality of them. Now, for that purpose, nothing is of more con- sequence than the facts ; and McLennan has put it beyond doubt that the phenomena of infanti- cide, wife-stealing, exogamy, polyandry, kinship through females as well as through males, and tribal intermarriage or endogamy, are all to be found within the area of savagery and barbarism. H' The Evolution of Morality » 213 A new theory may of course be formed of the order of their connection, or sequence; but it is the indisputable merit of McLennan to have shown the existence and prevalence of the phe- nomena themselves. One could almost wish that 80 keen an observer had contented himself with collecting and grouping facts of savage life, an increase of which would scarcely have failed to sober his speculations. For nothing is more striking in his work than the disproportion be- tween the vastness of his hypothesis and the comparative scantiness of the facts adduced to support it. It does not appear unreasonable to suppose that among savages who generally mar- ried within their own tribe wives should, when opportunity offered, have been stolen from other tribes; and even descent through females may always, as it does to-day, coexist with descent through males. In any case, we shall I'equire a much larger collection of evidence than has yet appeared to convince us that every branch of the human family has gone through precisely the same course of development. Yet this supposi- tion seems to underlie current investigation into the history of family relations. The ajpriori fal- lacy would seem to have arisen from confound- ing facts with the mind's method of apprehend- I \> !.'** 'ill i 214 Is Development Uniform f ing them. Knowledge, indeed, proceeds from the vagne to the definite, but, as Lotze used to say, existence is under no obligation to con- form itself to our method of cognizing it ; and I see no warrant for the current assumption, that the relations between the sexes began everywhere with indefinite promiscuity, and were gradually determined, in the manner of an abstract notion in logic, into more regulated forms, which at last culminated in monogamy. The inexhaustible life and variety of Iiistorical movements must not be sacrificed to the dead, monotonous mechanism of the logician's art, whether it be attempted by Hegel or by those who criticise him. And the elimination of circumstance and accident, which experience shows us are so potent in the forma- tion and development of contemporary institu- tions and habits, is all the more unjustifiable in the early history of mankind, when human beings were more than now the prey of contingency, and yet possessed fewer ideas for extricating them- selves from its clutches. Our antecedent expec- tation, therefore, would be that the social insti- tutions of savages would everywhere be condi- tioned by their environment ; and that while in one section of the vast area of savagery, where women happjened to be scarce, polyandry might; The Evoltiiion of Morality. 215 be practised, in another, under more normal con- ditions, polygyny, or even monogamy, would be the general rule. And it is surely a subject of amazement in McLennan's theory that polygyny does not appear as one of the earliest stages in the evolution of the famil3\ When the ances- tors of man had most of the animal in them, they could scarcely have gone by an arrangement which power and sexual jealousy make natural for the lower animals. And of the primitiveness of polygyny neither biology nor history leaves us in doubt. But the coexistence of other forms, under different conditions, need not be disputed. Indeed, even in McLennan's argument there is a tacit confession that endogamy, which with polygyny and the family he would make the out- come of the long development, must have been as archaic as exogamy ; for he observes t^ at the separate endogamous tribes are not cnly as nu- merous, but "in some respects as rude, as the separate exogamous tribes" (p. 116). McLennan imagines primitive men to have wandered about in hordes without any concep- tion of family relations. Their sexual condition was one of unqualified promiscuity, in the restric- tion of which, through polyandry, he conceives all advance to have been made. But although in % »> tm (T \1 ii > m i; fiSiS 1;!:; lllii' mi\ ill 216 Darwin versus McLennan, this assnmption of " communal marriage," or ab- cn'ginal hetairism, McLennan is followed by Lub- bock, Bachofen, and Morgan, the theory receives no confirmation either from the physiology and psychology of man and other animals or from the known customs of savage and barbarous peoples. " We may indeed conclude from what we know of the jealousy of all male quadrupeds," says Dar- win, " that promiscuous intercourse in a state of nature is extremely improbable. . . . There- fore, looking far enough back in the stream of time, and judging from the social habits of man as he now exists, the most probable view is that he aboriginally lived in small communities, each with a single wife, or if powerful with several, whom he jealously guarded against all other men " ("Descent of Man," pp. 690, 691). In archaic times there prevailed ** — the simple plan, That they should take who have the power. And they Bhould keep who can." In the struggle for life and survival of the fittest we expect the selection and evolution of power and sexual jealousy. It seems incredible that, as a general rule, equal and indiscriminate co- partnership in the possession of women should have been the outcome of that war of all against The Evolution of Morality. 217 all. And, indeed, actual evidence of the forma- tion of rudimentary societies, by an observer so competent as Sir A. Lyall, shows that if the per- plexed jungle of primitive society springs out of many roots, " the hero is the tap-root from which, in a great degree, all the rest were nourished and grown " ("Asiatic Studies," p. 168). Nor do we find in the known habits and customs of savages any evidence of the very unheroic practice of com- munal marriage. McLennan does not attempt to establish the point, which is simply postulated as a background for the unfolding of his theory. In fact, however lax the marital arrangements among savages, some kind of permanent union, some appropriation of individual women by in- dividual men, is always to be found or inferred. If the Esquimaux lend their wives, they mnst have wives of their own whom others cannot ap- propriate without their consent. Even the Aleu- tian Islanders and Fuegians have fixed marital relations, and it would bo difficult to find more degraded tribes than there. Promiscuity in McLennan's system is followed by infanticide of females, which would naturally evolve polyandry and, if carried far enough, wife- stealing too. But in considering this practice as universally prevalent, McLennan manifestly goes h V 3' 1I; v\ Mi' 218 Infanticide Misinterpreted, beyond the limits of possibility. If all clans killed their infant daughters, where could women be found even to steal ? Under the stress of cir- cumstances making it impossible to procure suffi- cient subsistence, it is conceivable that savages should destroy their young ; but, knowing the savage's incapacity for providing against the fut- ure, I find it hard to believe that, in the cruel grasp of the present, he should discriminate be- tween boys and girls when both alike are equally burdensome. And Sir John Lubbock assures us, that while infanticide has widely prevailed among savages, " boys were killed as frequently as girls. Eyre expressly states that this was the case in Australia " (" Origin of Civilization," p. 81). It should further be noted that if, as McLennan supposes, female infanticide coexists with exog- amy and wife-stealing, it would be difficult to explain, not why so many female children are killed, but why any are spared, seeing that none can be married within the tribe. No doubt, again, infanticide of females would be sufficient to account for polyandry ; but neither infanticide (whether of girls or boys or of both) nor polyandry can be shown to be practices of uni- versal prevalence. It is possible, though not, I think, verifiable, that in special circumstances the ill I in The Evolution of Morality. 219 killing of female infants may have led to polyan- dry ; but more natural explanations may easily be found. Sir Henry Maine tells us of the origin of a modern case of polyandry : " It is known to have arisen in the native Indian army " (" Early Law and Custom," p. 124). And if we suppose in primitive times, similarly, a number of men torn away from their original seats (in which the balance between the sexes may have been even) with only a few women among them, we have, judging from the analogy of the Indian army, all the conditions required for the emergence of polyandry. !Now, as Sir Henry Maine has pointed out {Ojp. cit.^ p. 212), our earliest glimpses of a great part of the human race reveal it in a state of movement. Fighting, or wandering for food, it is not unreasonable to suppose that in many cases they settled in new seats with only a comparatively small number of women ; and there is evidence that some of the islands of the Pacific were settled by boat-loads of men with only a few of the other sex. Polyandry could thus be ex- plained without denying to primitive man those instincts of power and jealousy which biologists and psychologists alike attribute to him. But, of course, it could make no pretence to being an in- variable stage for the whole human race in the 220 Wife-stealing and Polyandry. course of its development. On the contrary, it would be seen to have originated, under excep- tional circumstances, with the strays and waifs of humanity. As the only steady cause of ine- quality between the sexes was war, which would tend to leave the women in excess, it would seem, in the absence of other evidence, that polygyny was in all probability more primitive and more universal than polyandry. It is also a fair assumption that female infan- ticide should lead to wife-stealing, which might ultimately crystallize into the system of exogamy. Certainly wife-stealing, like infanticide and poly- andry, actually exists ; and, as McLennan was the first to point out, the form of capture attests its decay among tribes who once practised it. We do not, therefore, dispute the facts ; but we do question the significance with which McLennan endows them. There is no evidence that wife- stealing and exogamy were universal stages in the evolution of humanity. In fact, the connection between infanticide, polyandry, and the capture of women is arbitrarily assumed by McLennan. Infanticide may coexist with polygyny or mo- nogamy. Polyandry and wife-stealing we should not expect to find conjoined ; for if tribes are brave enough to, steal wives, they would not cease f.4' I The Evolution of Morality. 221 stealing till they liad one or more for each nan. And Mr. Herbert Spencer is authority for the as- sertion that " where wife-stealing is now practised, it is commonly associated with polygyny ; while, on the other hand, polyandry is & trait of certain rude peoples who are habitually peaceful " (" Soci- ology," i., pp. 646, o47). Thus wife-stealing tribes would soon cease to be polyandrous ; and McLen- nan is left without a basis for his imaginary evolution of Nair and Tibetan polyandry, with their ultimate outcome of monogamy and descent and inheritance through males. Polyandry is a permanent and universal stago in McLennan^s scheme of family development. Yet we have only to remember that women captured by the stronger tribe were lost to the weaker to see that with the growth of strong tribes, who must have had women in excess, there was a concomitant decay of weaker tribes, until none but the strong, polygynist tribes remained. The polyandrous condition was never general, and where it did ex- ist, was often so unstable as to pass almost at once over into its opposite. Similarly, the opposition between exogamy and endogamy resolves itself into a vanishing differ- ence. It was perhaps inevitable, in the first flush of a new discovery, that McLennan should have ■ 1: i ;i 222 Exogamy and Endogamy, overlooked facts equally important. It was of course known, both from Koman and Hindoo law, that persons within a certain degree of relation- ship (theoretically, in Hindoo law, persons de- scended from the same male ancestor), could not intermarry. But McLennan was the first to show the prevalence of a similar restriction among savage and barbarous tribes. Unfortunately, he made no study of their social or governmental reg- ulations ; and the fact that the members of a cer- tain group could not intermarry, taken along with the fact of wife-stealing, seemed to him equiv- alent to universal prohibition among kindred. But the study of the government o^ ivages is tending to the same result as wo have j ust noted among the Aryans. Many of the tribes quoted by McLennan as exogamous are found to be made up of divisions, or gentea (as Morgan calls them) ; and while a member of a division is for- bidden marriage within it, he may marry in any of the other divisions of his tribe. Thus among tlie Iroquois, a "Wolf may not marry in the Wolf clan, but he may marry a woman of any of the remaining seven clans among the five tribes of the Iroquois ; and Sir Henry Maine notices the same external circle among the Chinese. It is coming, therefore, to be established, that as » The Evolution of Morality, 223 amoncf the Komans a man might not many within the prohibited degrees, yet must marry a Koman, so among savages there is an endogamous as well as an exogamons circle ; and while any particular division is exogamous with regard to itself, it is endogamous with regard to the re- maining divisions of the tribe. A word with regard to kinship through females must end this survey of McLennan's account of the family. That it exists among certain savages is undeniable. That it ever existed as a rule for the whole human race is an assumption that has no probability in its favor, and an assumption we have no motive to make when polyandry is found not to be an invariable stage in the development of marital relations. The facts McLennan has brought together are eminently valuable. His speculative interpreta- tion of them, everywhere ingenious and original, is sometimes fanciful and commonly open to the charge of unwarranted generalization. A somewhat similar verdict must be pronounced upon Morgan. Morgan undertook to determine the sequence of family institutions from systems of reckoning relationship. Comparing the systems of many tribes, he held that the entire development of the '!•: 224 Morgans Theory. Iiuman family is represented by three great sys- tems of consanguinity, which he designated the Malayan, the Turanian, and the Aryan. These systems rest, not upon nature, but upon marriage ; so that, given the system, we may infer the form of marriage. It is assumed that each relationship, as recognized in language, is what at one time act- ually existed under a certain form of marriage. Tlie Aryan system is deaorvptive — that is, it makes the relationship of each person specific (as, e.g.^ brother's son, father's brothers son). The Ma- layan and Turanian systems are classificatory — that is, they arrange in categories according to generation (" brothers," e.g., including not only my own, but the sons of my father's brothers, and "sons" including not only my own, but my brothers' also). A system of consanguinity is naturally slower to change than the form of the family whose re- lationships it expresses. And thus it is that the Malayan system of consanguinity and affinity, outliving for unremembered centuries the mar- riage customs in which it originated, remains to attest the fact that such a family existed when the system was formed. This system, though its raison d^etre is gone, survives in daily use among the Hawaiians and other Polynesian tribes. Un- at sys- ,ed the These rriage ; le form onship, [me act- arriage. t makes (as, e.g., rhe Ma- catory — pding to Dot only [lers, and but my y slower ehose re- that the affinity, the mar- mains to ied when lOugh its se among )e8. Un- T/ie Evolution of Morality » 225 der it, all consanguineii, near and remote, are classified into five categories. Tlins, myself, my brothers and sisters, and those whom we call first, second, third, and more remote cousinp. are all without distinction brothers and sisters. My father and mother, together with their brothers and sisters, and what we call their first, second, and more remote cousins, are all without distinc- tion my parents. Similarly of grandparents. And, below me, my sons and daughters, with their several cousins, as before, are all without distinction my children. And similarly of grand- children. Moreover, all the individuals of the same grade are brothers and sisters to each other. Now, if this system, as we must assume, ex- pressed relationships which once actually existed, we may deduce from it the form of the family in which it originated. This can be no other than what Morgan calls the consanguine family — that arising from the intermarriage of brothers and sisters, own and collateral, in a group. Since the ^ ^lationships recognized in the system are identical with those emerging from the consan- guine family, the latter must have been the ba- sis of the system of consanguinity. An illustra- tion or two will make this clear. The system 15 IP ^^D;'' i ^n'* ^H^ f' 'i H^' h li h J'i 1^' J;' ■ j' j|. hI Ir: pr H' 1 f t lli' if ' '' ■ 226 Consanguine Family, makes the children of my several brothers and sisters my sons and danghters : the reason lies in the consangnine family, in which all my sis- ters and my brothers' wives are my wives. Were I a female, the foregoing relationships would be the same ; for, in the consangnine family, my several brothers being my husbands, their chil- dren by other wives would be my step-children, which relationship being unrecognized, they nat- urally fall into the category of my sons and daughters. Every relationship of the Malayan system is explicable on the assumption of the con- sangnine family, and no other ; consequently the system is evidence conclusive of such a family. Under the Turanian system of relationship, while my brothers' children continue to be mine as well as his, and mine his as well as mine, there is a departure from the Malayan system in mak- ing my sister's children my nephews and nieces, and my children her nephews and nieces. From this initial difference between the two systems fol- low all other differences. Without noticing them, let us ask at once what kind of family does the Turanian system of consanguinity presuppose as its basis ? And the answer is clear : A family differing from the consanguine only in its pro- hibition of marriage between own brothers and The Evolution of Morality. 227 ship, mine there iriak- ieces, From 8 f ol- liem, 8 the 66 as jamily pro- is and sisters. Tliat is to say, it is a family founded upon the intermarriage of several sisters, own and collateral, with each othei*'s husbands in a group, the joint husbands not being necessarily kinsmen of each other ; and, also, on the intermarriage of several brothers, own and collateral, with each other's wives in a group, these wives not being necessarily of kin to each other. It is designated by Morgan the punaluan family, from a Ha- waiian analogue. And he supposes it to have developed from the consanguine family as soon as the evils of close inbreeding came to be gen- erally recognized. And from it, as he holds, sprang the organized " Gens " — " the exogamous totem-kin " of McLennan — whose first germ con- sisted in the systematic exclusion of brothers and sisters from the marriage relation. Now, as there is a complete parallelism (which we have not here space to illustrate) between the relationships recognized by the Turanian system and those growing out of the punaluan marriage, it is inferred that the latter is the ground of the former. Tim Turanian system of consanguinity and affinity was universal among the North Amer- ican aborigines, and has been found in South America and Africa ; it still prevails in India and Australia. Like the Malayan, it survived after the r sr 228 Punaluan Family, %\ foi'iii of family in which it oi'iginated had passed away. The form of family advances of necessity faster than systems of consanguinity, whieli follow to record the family relationships. And it takes something like a revolution to bring the system of consanguinity into line with the changing structure of the family. It was through the or- ganization into "Gentes" that the Malayan sys- tem was changed into the Turanian. But the Turanian did not undergo further development ; and being false to the evolving forms of the fam- ily, it was finally superseded by the Aryan sys- tem, which is founded on facts of consanguinity in the monogamous family. But between the punaluan and the monogamous family Morgan intercalates two other forms. The higher is the jpatriarchal family, which is founded on the union of one man with several wives, the entire house- hold being organized under paternal power ; and the lower is the syndyasmian ov pairing family, which was founded upon marriage between single pairs, but without an exclusive cohabitation, and continuing only during the pleasure of the parties. The pairing family is a development of the pu- naluan, under the favoring influence of improve- ment in the arts of life, in house-building, in the means of subsistence, etc. And the patriarchal The Evolution of Morality. 229 igle and ties. pu- ove- L the rchal family springs out of the sjudyasmian when pastoral life begins, with the holding of lands and the care of flocks and herds. Lastly appears the Tnonvqamous family, which mnst be associated with \he rise of individual property and the de- sire of fathers to establish lineal succession to es- tates. As the form of the family has changed in the past, so must it in the future keep pace with the advance of society. But should the monog- amous family fail to answer the coming require- ments of society, it is impossible to predict the nature of its successor. Thus the theory of Morgan, like that of Mc- Lennan, reaches out into a past and a future as distant as each is hypothetical. Hence some of the objections urged against McLennan's theory are equally applicable to Morgan's. There is, for instance, not the slightest ground, apart from the exigencies of a theory, for the assumption of an aboriginal promiscuity in sexual relations, which, indeed, both archaeology and biology tend to dis- prove. And it may be reiterated, once more, that it is a gratuitous concession to our methodology when the facts of the world are supposed to ar- range themselves according to our mode of appre- hending them. We have no evidence whatever that all branches of the human family passed \ m:i\ it' M I'f li I ■■;1 ■ i ^1 Mtj.' ? 1^ ii^. III I ■ HI (^ ■■ 11 ; ; 230 Morgans Great Achievement, through precisely the eanie stages of develop* ineiit, either in general or, still less, in the details of their social iustitutions. This is the irp^rov '^^vho^i of the theory before us. And not only does this baseless assumption determine the ini- tial stage of the theory, it colors it from begin- ning to end. Nevertheless, it is not possible to deny the value of the facts collected by Morgan. It was, indeed, a stupendous achievement to tabulate and explain the systems of consanguinity and affinity of one hundred and thirty -nine tribes and nations, representing, numerically, four-fifths of the en- tire human family. And, in the comparative study of institutions, the facts, if rightly under- stood, are of vital significance. They become misleading only when, apart from history, they are supposed to tell us anything about the order of development of human institutions. Even if it were granted that Morgan's " conjectural solu- tion " of the facts is correct, and that the several systems of consanguinity really imply the correl- ative existence of seveial forms of the family, it would have to be conceded that there is no evi- dence of the whole human family having passed successively through all these stages, or, indeed, of any very necessary connection between the stages The Evolution of Morality. 231 themselves. " They stand to each other in a logi- cal sequence " (p. 413), says Morgan ; and, indeed, that is just why wo suspect them. They seem the creatures of successive logical determination, rather than the footprints of infant humanity. Some such acknowledgment is implied in Mor- gan's confession that promiscuous intercourse has not been practised " within the time of recorded human observation," and that it can only be " de- duced theoretically as a necessary condition ante- cedent to the consanguine family" (p. 502). And, again, the Malayan system, which expresses the relationships existing under the consanguine family, is pronounced the oldest form "because it is the simplest (p. 403). Thus the consanguine family is really the starting-point of the whole system ; from it promiscuity is inferred to have preceded, and without it the punaluan family could not emerge in the sequel. I proceed, there- fore, to examine this crucial point — the evidence for the existence of tlie consanguine family, on which the whole theory depends. As a family organization, Morgan himself tells us it nowhere existed in historic times. The marriage of sisters and brothers, own and collat- eral, in a group, is, as we saw, solely an infer- ence from the Malayan system of consanguinity ii f'r I'! mi mm f If !, 'i ' 232 Marred by Speculation. and affinity. That system is classificatory ; it groups all individuals of the same generation into a class and calls them children, or parents, or grandchildren, or grandparents, without further distinction than that of sex. Now, it must be ad- mitted that Morgan's hypothesis satisfies the first condition of any hypothesis : it is sufficient to account for the facts. But when we ask if it is in itself a probable assumption, or if taking promiscuity as established this form of family was likely to succeed it, it is impossible to an- swer in the affirmative. AVe must therefore seek a more probable explanation of the facts repre- sented by the Malayan system than the consan- guine family aifords. A natural supposition is that the Malayan system of relationsliip arose solely from a poverty of language among savages. Some qualification will, however, be necessary in this hypothesis, since Morgan tells us that many of these languages are rich in discriminating terms of address. There is one word for brother or sister when a younger is addressing an elder, and another in the converse case. It must there- fore be admitted that their concrete terms, of daily and hourly use, are abundant and emi- nently significant. But may we not assume that abstract terms of relationship are scanty ? Is not The Evolution of Morality. 233 that what our science of coraparative language leads us to expect ? They are rich in concrete, poor in abstract, terminology. But what then follows ? Why, that this so-called Malayan sys- tem of consanguinity and affinity is not based on blood-ties (these not being, as later investigations show, facts of Drii lary perception), and has noth- ing at all to do with any particular form of the family, but is simply a rough way of classifying all the generations which might ever bo known to any individual. Under this system " brother " is not one of the same blood, " father " is not one who begets, " mother " is not one who bears ; all alike are descriptions of classes. Is there, then, no method of describing relationships nearer ? The objection implied in the question touches our hypothesis not more than the other. But, fortunately, Morgan himself supplies an answer. " A descriptive system precisely like the Aryan [*.«., the one we use] always existed both with the Turanian and the Malayan " (p. 484). The latter would therefore seem to be merely a classi- fication of generations, to which, naturally enough among communal societies, the same names were applied. Besides, Morgan's hypothesis does not give an unquestionable explanation of all the facts, though ■i I I •r ,^ 'l r '■( .1 i I' (^ li if 234 Mythical and Unsatisfactory, the contrary has bo far been assumed. There is one part of tlie so-called Malayan system in regard to which his account does not satisfy nie. If there are several brothers, A^ B^ C, and several sisters, a, hy Of then, no doubt, in the consanguine family, where Af B, C\ and o, h, c, are intermarried, a's children may be called children of A and B and O, and similarly of ^'s children and c's children ; but why should a's children be called ^^s and c's, and ^'s children a's and €% and c'a children a's and h'Bf as they are designated in the Malayan sys- tem ? Because, says Morgan, -4, B, and O being husbands of a, their children by b and would be a's step-children, which relationship being un- recognized, they naturally fall into the category of a's sons and daughters (p. 410). But this is surely to attribute to primitive savages our own modes of tracing relationship, founded upon mo- nogamous marriage. And when Morgan observes, by way of proof, that "among ourselves a step- mother is called mother, and a step-son a son," he overlooks the fact that there is with us no other mother, and the father is always the same. I^or does the case have any analogy with that of call- ing A and B and O fathers. They are so called because, although only one of them can be the fa- ther of the child, any one of them may have been, •ves. The Evolution of Morality. 235 and the pateniity ie supposed to be unknown. But there can be no doubt tliat a is the mother of lier child, and that h is the mother of hers. Pater- nity is doubtful, because it is inferred ; maternity, being a fact of perception, does not admit of doubt. Wliy, then, does a's child call h mother, and ^'s child call a mother % This cannot be explained by the consanguine family. But it is a species of relationship recognized in the Malayan system ; therefore, that system is not based on the consan- guine family. If, on the other hand, that system be supposed a mere classification of the genera- tions known to most individuals, then the term " mother " must be applied by a child to the women a, &, and c, because they all belong to the same generation. With the disproof of the existence of the con- sanguine family, Morgan's theory of the devel- opment of marital relations falls to the ground. The punaluan family, by which he accounts for the Turanian system of relationship, is evolved from the consanguine by excluding own brothers and sisters from the marriage union. But if there never was a consanguine, there could be no puna- luan family developed from it. And, accordingly, some other account must be given of the Turanian system of consanguinity. If we admitted the ! ';i i * I ( I t 'I ! urn m ■>li 236 I^ac/s Otherwise Explained, pnnalnan family as an explanation, it would be open to most of tlie objections already urged against tbe consanguine. ExcUiding it, tlien, bow are tbe pbenomena to be explained ? It would be aside from our present purpose to enter fully into tbis matter. But as tbe main difference between tbe Malayan and Turanian systems lies in tbe fact tbat tbe one designates my sister's cbildren as my cbildren, and tbe otber as my nepbews and nieces, an explanation of tbe di- vergency may be found in tbe supposition tbat wbile tbe old classificatory system, in general, re- mained in vogue, it became modified under tbe organization into classes, tbrougb tbe separa- tion establisbed between brotbers and sisters by tbe system of reckoning descent and inberitance tbrougb females only. My sister's cbildren be- long to ber clan, mine to tbe clan of my wife. A new designation, tberefore, was needful, wben a rule broke up tbe old communal system in wbicb brotbers' and sisters' cliildre:i all belong to tbe same group and, being of tbe same genera- tion, were designated by tbe same name. Wbile tbe consangnine and punaluan families supply an imaginary raison WHre for tbe Malayan and Turanian systems of relationsbip, tbe syndy- asmian and patriarcbal families have not even .1' , if 1 1 The Evolution of Morality, 237 such shadowy support. They are assumed, not because any particular system of kinship intplied them, but because they mediated the logical pro- gression from the punaluan to the monogamous family. Wo know, of course, from history and observation that such unions have been practised ; but there is no reason, save the symmetry of log- ical development assumed in Morgan's theory, for making them universal stages in the progress of mankind. As they do not profess, like the other three forms of the family, to be established from systems of consanguinity, and are only spe- cies of logical determination of the punaluan, we need not consider them further. Nor is much comment required ou the Aryan system of consanguinity and affinity. It differs from the preceding systems in being descriptive and not classificatory. It is founded on the mo- nogamous family, whose existence, known to us for three thousand years, does not need to be in- ferred from any system of consanguinity. This Aryan system is not, according to Morgan, a de- velopment of the Turanian as the Turanian was of the Malayan. It is an entirely different sys- tem, having no sign of connection with the others. Yet Morgan supposes that all peoples, now having the Aryan system, formerly had the 1' ': Wr M'' mi. i:i:^- I 238 Distrust of Theories, Turanian. This presumption is, however, largely fonnded on the assumption that the inonogamons family is developed from the punaluan. But we have shown that there is no satisfactory evidence of a punaluan family. Morgan adds, it is true, that the "impoverished condition of the original nomenclature of the Aryan system," limited as it was to " father and mother, brother and sister, and son and daughter, and a common term ap- plied indiscriminately to nepliew, grandson, and cousin " (p. 481), could not possibly have been the sole nomenclature of relationships used by a people in so advanced a condition ay the Aryans ; and he therefore assumes that at that time the Turanian system was just dying out among them. But this is little better than begging the question. What was there in the simple relations of primi- tive Aryan society that demanded a complex sys- tem of consanguinity ? There is no ground for supposing, as there is absolutely no evidence, that the beginnings of the Aryan system were syn- chronous with the disintegration of the Turanian. This protracted examination of the theories which have been furnished by Morgan and Mc- Lennan of the evolution of conjugal relations cannot fail, I think, to induce a sceptical state of mind in relation to all such speculations. The The Evolution of Morality, 239 data are so scanty, the lacunas so nnmerons, that ahnost any hypothesis, it wonld seem, niiglit es- tablish some claim to verification. Onr informa- tion is made up of a collection of scattered observations on the marriage cnstoms of a small part of the human family. Moved by the scien- tific impulse, we attempt to discover their origin and causes. But if even in physical iiivestiga- gations, where complicating conditions may be eliminated, we are always liable to error fi-om the possibility of a plurality of causes, how much more so in dealing with social phenomena which are inextricably entangled and intertwined. The ignoring of this limitation is the weak point in the argument of Professor Robertson Smith, whose " Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia " is otherwise (if I may say so) a model of philo- logico-historical research. "When Professor Smith lays down (p. 132) that " the very object of hj^- pothesis is to inquire whet' er a real cause {vera causa) has not had a wider operation than there is any direct evidence for," his position may not be disputed ; but when he adds " the necessary and sufficient proof that this is so is the wide prevalence of effects which the cause is adequate to produce," he overlooks altogether the possi- bility, and, indeed, in human affairs the proba- 11 IF ; :ii-'-^ 240 Robertson Smith's Logic. bility, of the same piienom^non having different causes. The " necessary and snfiicieiit proof " must show, not only (1) the prevalence of the effects, and (2) the adequacy of a certain antecedent to produce them, but also (3) the impossibility of their being produced by any other antecedent or antecedents. This last all-essential link in the demonstration is what is wanting in current theories of the development of the family. And with the omission of it goes a corresponding neglect of the environment and circumstances, physical, social, and especially historical, in which any particular form of marriage appears. Iso- lating the various conjugal relations from their historic settings, in which alone an explanation of each is to be found, the theorist generally puts them in an arbitrary row, as one might string beads, and then asseverates that this linear ar- rangement of contemporaneous phenomena in space corresponds to the successive order of their evolution in time ! Meanwhile, no one knows that there has been such a universal development ; or that there ever was a time when all the forms of the family did not coexist as they do to-day. It would seem, therefore, that even the most conservative school of moralists need sacrifice nothing to the current theory of the evolution of The Evolution of Morality, 241 the family. There can be no settlement of any ethical question by an arbitrary deduction of all forms of conjugal relations from a single imagi- nary source along a single imaginary path. Ko light is thrown upon the study of morals by an appearance of deriving historic from prehistoric institutions. Yet, in the study of the family, this unfruitful method has for the most part been followed ; and from McLennan's "Primitive Marriage" to Lippert's recent valuable "Ge- schichte der Familie " simple facts are obscured by overshadowing speculative theories. What forms of marriage now exist we know or may knov, ; what existed in historic times we have some report of; but beyond this horizon all is darkness, and remains darkness, though Morgan and Lippert would fain conjure up the unrecorded past, and Letourneau in piophetic vision predict the course of the yet unborn future. It is not, therefore, with theories of the evolu- tion of the family that moralists have to reckon. Like other phantasies and bold guesses, these may be passed by. But it is different with facts — actual observations made within the historical horizon. These have a vital interest for the moralist. And it is the merit of the evolu- tionist to have recognized their significance, 16 242 Ethics need Facts^ not Theories, though in general he managed to eviscerate it by adapting tliem to some extraneone speculation, cosmic or sociological. Many of the more striking facts known in re- gard to family relations have already been men- tioned in connection with the theories into which they have been woven. If these theories have been rejected, it was not from any desire to min- imize the revolting character of the marital con- nections between men and women in many savage or barbarous tribes. There is no evidence that every people once lived in absolute promiscuity or in consanguine families ; but it is a fact that among the Todas of the Neilgherry Hills the husband's brothers become Inisbands of the wife, and the wife's sisters become common wives of all her husbands. The custom of reckoning kinship through fe- males may not always have preceded the cus- tom of reckoning kinship through males, but McLennan, Bachofen, Robertson Smith, and Lip- pert liave shown that it was at least a widely ex- tended practice. It is found among the natives of America, Australia, and Africa. It prevailed also in the ancient world. The Egyptians long lield the mother's name indispensable; the Ly- cians. as Herodotus narrates fully, traced gene- The Evolution of Morality, 243 alogies through mothers ; the Germans, according to Tacitns, considered the relationship between children and their mother's brother closer than that between children and their own father. In Hebrew, em, the word for " mother," also means " stock, race, community," and similarly with the Arabic omm^ ommaj while in either language, again, the bonds of relationship are designated by a word connoting the " womb." And Professor Smith makes the highly original suggestion that Eve, "the mother of all living" (Gen. lii. 20), is " the universal eponyma, to whom all kinship groups must be traced back. Eve is the person- ification of the bond of kinship (conceived as ex- clusively mother-kinship), just as Adam is sim- ply * nian,' i.e., the personification of mankind " {Op. cit, p. 177). Lastly, in the "Eumenides" of ^schylus, Bachofen saw (like Gervinus with regard to "Hamlet") a tragic conflict between two world-epochs: the hoary age of mother-kinship, represented by the Erinnyes, and the dawning age of father-kinship as announced by Apollo and certified by Athene in the judicial acquittal of the matricide Orestes. Along with mother-kinship goes the custom of a husband settling in the family of his wife. Livingston found an isolated example of it not 244 Woman the Head of the Family. far from Zululand. The main features were that the man, in order to marry, had to move to the craal of his wife, promise constantly to provide the mother-in-law with wood, never un- dertake service elsewhere without her consent, and, in case of separation, leave all the children as property of the wife. Among ancient Arab tribes, the husband also went to the tent of the wife ; and when she wished to dismiss him (for he stayed at her pleasure) she turned the tent round so that the door faced opposite its former direction, " and when the man saw this he knew that he was dismissed and did not. enter." And in Syriac and Hebrew, as well as Arabic, the hus- band is said to " go in " to the bride. It will be remembered, too, that the tent to which Isaac took Rebekah was "his mother Sarah's tent" (Gen. xxiv. 67), and that Sisera fled " to the tent of Jael the wife of lleber the Kenite " (Judges iv. 17), and that Samson's wife lemained with her people, and received there the visits of her husband (Judges xv. 1). These all embody, in a modified form, what seems to have been the imiversal rule of primitive marriage among the Hebrews : " Therefore shall a man leave his fa- ther and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife" (Gen. ii. 24). , The Evolution of Morality, 245 But the custom of reckoning kinship through women, and that of men joining the family of their wives, do not imply promiscuous relations between the sexes, of wliich, as we have already seen, there is absolutely no evidence. Never- theless, there are found in the whole area of savagery, side by side with marriage relations and domestic virtues like our own, practices and sentiments wholly unlike, and even opposed to them. Nothing can be more striking than the variety of arrangements in regard to the sexes. Very frequently wives and maidens are distin- guished, and while conjugal fidelity is required of the former, no importance is attached to maid- enly chastity. Even in marriage some Arab women are bound for only four days of the week, being free to go with anyone they like during the off days. And once a year, on the night of a certain festival, a similar liberty was enjoyed by the wives of the Nicariiguan aborigines. Again, wives, as the property of the husband, might occasionally be put at the service of oth- ers ; and Cato^s conduct in lending Martia to his friend Hortensius is nothing more than the laws of hospitality require among the Esquimaux, Greenlanders, and other tribes. Still, the rule is that the strictest fidelity is demanded of mar- •' »l = !'■ ■! \ ii 246 Lax Fidelity, ried women. A Peruvian maiden might live a loose life ; but if as wife she were guilty of infi- delity, the punishment was death. A similar fate awaited the unchaste wife in Mexico, whcie divorce was reserved for such slight faults as bad character, dirty habits, and the like. Farther north, among the Comanches, the wife was pun- ished by cutting off her nose. Still, it is not pre- tended that infidelity was always regarded as a heinous offence. And, on the other hand, a wife might be divorced for much less weighty reasons. This brittleness of the marriage bond is a very striking characteristic of savage family life. Among the Iroquois and the Tahitians a marriage might be dissolved when either of the parties wished it ; but the right of effecting a separation generally inhered in the husband, who exercised it freely and often most cnielly. In East Africa, as in New Zealand, it consisted simply in turning the wife out of doors, to which the American Chippewayans added a "good drubbing." Prop- erty and children remained with the liusband, thoughto this rule there may be found exceptions in the customs of the Dakotahs, Samoans, Kar- ens, and others. "While restrictions are generally put upon mar- ried women, whose conjugal fidelity is the natural The Evolution of Morality. 247 outgrowth of their position as property or chat- tels of tlie husband, the greatest laxity is often allowed to young unmarried girls, or even forced upon them. In West Africa there are public halls where every maiden is exposed prior to marriage, often for a period of several months. And the instances mentioned by Herodotus and Strabo show that among the Lydians, Assyrians, and Babylonians a woman was not free to marry till she had offered herself once in the temple of Venus. The Jews seem to have been ac- quainted with this custom, but rejected it (Dent. xxiii. 18). A somewhat similar usage obtained in the Balearic Islands, where the bride became the exclusive wife of her husband only on the day after the wedding. And among the Santals, a hill tribe of India, marriage is now brought about by turning all the young people promis- cuously together, and requiring them, after six days' license, to pair off as man and wife. Kor must it be supposed that such revolting practices are limited to marriage ceremonies. It would be easy to enumerate examples of female licentious- ness continuing throughout the entire period of unmarried life. But I think it will be enough to mention what was narrated to me last summer by a missionary who had spent several years at ii f !i' M 248 Maidenly Chastity unknown, Aneitjnm, and is now about to settle on Santo, both islands in the New Hebrides. Maidenly chastity was there, according to this unimpeach- able authority, an unknown conception, unlimited hetairism being the normal condition of every unmarried woman from earliest giilhood. And licentiousness had so colored tlieir modes of thought and speech that it seemed impossible to initiate them into Christian purity without, at the same time, teaching them a new and cleaner language. It is facts liko theso that moralists, especially of the intuitive school, are called upon to face. Nor are these the only perplexing facts bearing upon the morality of the family. It must be recognized that among savages marrying is, for the most part, but the acquisition by the man of a new object of gratification, a chattel which may at once minister to his appetite and conduce to his profit. Wives are, accordingly, stolen or bought like any other property, though purchase, which is at least as old as the Iliad and the Pen- tateuch, is far more prevalent at the present day than capture. It is still the theory of Moslem law. Among certain savage tribes a man wilh several daughters is esteemed rich ; and whan among such people infanticide is practised, girls mi The Evolution of Morality. 249 are spared of tener than boys, as Dobritzhoffer re- lates of the Abiponians. And this conception of women as property naturally leads, were there not other motors, to polygyny. Thus Clavigero relates that among the Mexicans the possession of a large number of wives was regarded as a sign and proof of superiority. And there is similar testimony regarding many savage tribes, in which a direct relation may be observed between the means and standing of the husband and the number of his wives. In Ashantee the king is allowed uv law three thousand three hundred and thirty-three. The king of Yornba boasted that his wives, of whom some composed his body- guard, would, linked hand in hand, reach clean across his kingdom. And polygyny, though necessarily on a smaller scale, is practised in all parts of the earth — from the frigid to the torrid zone, over connected continents, and on solitary ocean isles. And as it prevails over vast areas of space, so it spans ages of time, appearing with the first dawn of history and flourishing to this day an)ong a large part of the human family. - To these deviations from our own marriage practices must be added examples of incest. These occur, naturally, in endogamous tribes. The Veddahs of Ceylon had a custom, not yet ex- 250 Incest. »M' tinct, sanctioning the marriage of a man with his younger sister, though they held it revolting to marry an elder sister or aunt. The same prac- tice is found in the Sandwich Islands, where the king sometimes married his sister, as among the Peruvians the Incas always did. According to Hearne, the Chippewayans frequently espoused their own daughters, giving them over, after some time, to their sons. Other savages have cei> 'n bars to marriage, some of them corresponding almost to our table of prohibited degrees. But the field of choice for wiving is exceedingly va- ried. Where a tribe is at once exogamous and endogamous, and lias at the same time no sense of consanguinity, there is no limit whatever ; so that a man's wife may be a remote foreigner or liis own sister, or if he be polygamous, both may be his wives. If the tribe be purely exogamous, he may marry anyone outside it, except in that restricted exogamy which limits him to his own confederacy. And if the tribe be purely endog- amous, his choice is narrowed to its own female members, including or excluding, according as a sense of blood -relationship is developed or not, his own immediate kin and affinity. There are other peculiar features of family life among the uncivilized, which could not be omit- The Evolution of Morality, 251 ted from a picture making any pretensions to completeness. But for a comparative study of the ethics of the family the details already men- tioned will perhaps be sufficient. This survey, brief as it has been, can scarcely Iiave failed to generate a suspicion of the histori- cal character of those moral ideals which draw their nourishment from the relations established between the sexes. Were these relations every- where the same, our domestic morality would seem as ultimate and as final as justice or benev- olence. But it is despoiled of its absoluteness when the discovery is made that our own form of marriage is but one of several competing types, that the "relations dear of father, son, and brother" have different foundations among different peoples, and that chastity and fidelity are so far from universal virtues that many peo- ples have no conception of them, and when they have appeared they seem to have grown out of rights in women as property — adultery in Mada- gascar, e.g.^ having the same punishment as theft — and are consequently never, or seldom, required of savage men. The rights, duties, virtues, and sentiments associated with our idea of the family cannot, therefore, be considered a part of the content of the moral law universal. 252 opposing Eth ical Schools, l!l< 1^ f 1 This seems to me a result of considerable im- portance for moral philosophy. And it is a re- sult that cannot be gainsaid by any school, since it is not a speculation, not even an inference, but an undeniable statement of actual facts. Moralists have divided into opposing camps on the question of the ultimate or the derivative nature of morality. While one party recognizes in moral laws nothing but means to ends, the other finds in them the expression of uncreated and unchanging relations, whose closest analogue is presented by mathematics. When this time- worn controve sy is stripped of the accidental features by which party rage has heightened the contrast J it will be seen that these positions are not mutually exclusive. If a moral law is but a maxim for the attainment of an end, then, unless the theory is suicidal, therg must be some ulti- mate end or ends for the sake of which maxims are enjoined ; and this absolute object might very properly be described as eternally desirable, self- evidencing, and standing in the same relation to the conscience (which recognizes its authority) as a mathematical principle to the understanding (which recognizes its truth). In other words, ihe relativist cannot logically escape the admission that at least some moral principle or principles The Evolution of Morality, 253 are intuitive, self-evident, and underived. And, as a matter of fact, the principle of universal benevolence has been so treated by relativists, at least since the time of Bentham. But the impli- cations of their logic have been hidden from themselves, through emphasis upon irrelevant issues. Holding the happiness of mankind as the sole ultimate good, they delighted to dwell upon the relativity of sundry virtues, and to show their emptiness and worthlessness apart from a tendency to promote the general w^elfare. And with still more ardor they proclaimed that the supreme good, or happiness of mankind, con- sisted in pleasure, which alone they declared truly desirable, if, indeed (as they generally de- nied), anything else could really be the object of human desire. Now, these highly speculative and dubious positions should not obscure to our view the underlying intuitional groundwork. Something at least is recognized as self-evident, primitive, and inviolably obligatory — the welfare of mankind. It is not, therefore, upon the ex- istence of primitive intuitions, but upon their immber, that the difference turns between the relative and the absolute moralist. They agree that there are primal and underived moral prin- ciples; but they cannot agree in determining i ( ,1 ! if H ' 254 // rA