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 Evolutionism 
 
 and 
 
 Idealism in Ethics 
 
 
 / ////, A.B., A.M., Ph.D. 
 
 OMAHA, NEBRASKA 
 1909 
 

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 XI I x x A 
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 i 2007 with funding from 
 
 licrosoft Corporation 
 
Evolutionism and Idealism 
 in Ethics 
 
 Thesis accepted by the Faculty 
 of the University of Nebraska 
 for the Ph. D. degree in Ethics and 
 Mataphysics. 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERICK COHN, A. B., A. M. 
 
 (University of Cincinnati.) 
 
 • . t , • • • ' • 
 
 OMAHA, NEBRASKA 
 
 PRESS OF DOUGLAS PRINTING CO. 
 I9O9 
 
7^/33 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction ..••••••'• 5 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Evolutionism " 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Evolutionary Ethics — Herbert Spencer . . . .10 
 
 Part I. Ethical Aim of Spencer's Philosophy. Scien- 
 tific Character. 
 Part II. Origin of the Moral Sense 
 Part III. Hedonistic Utilitarianism 
 Part IV. Justice 
 Part V. Negative and Positive Beneficence 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Evolution of Ethics — Darwin, Sutherland, Kropotkin . . 28 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Idealism — Immanuel Kant ...... 4° 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Summary and Criticism 47 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Convergence 54 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Reconciliation .... 
 
 60 
 
 292740 
 
Evolutionism and Idealism 
 in Ethics. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 "The key to the ancient philosophy is found," remarks Mar- 
 tineau, 1 "in a distinction which our language does not enable us ac- 
 curately to express; viz., between einai and gignesthai, — Seyn und 
 Werden, — absolute existence and relative phenomena." 
 
 "The key to the modern philosophy," continues the same eminent 
 writer, "is found in quite a different distinction, viz., that between 
 the subjective and objective — between the mind, as constituted seat 
 and principle of thought, and the scene or data assigned it to think. 
 To determine what belongs to the Ego and what to the non-Ego is 
 the great problem of recent times ; the answer to which is idealistic 
 and realistic in proportion as it gives ascendency to the former or to 
 the latter as the source of our cognitions. "- 
 
 Evolutionism and Idealism are the two great systems that dom- # 
 inate thought to-day. They divide between them the realm of philo- 
 sophic interest and inquiry. Each has its able advocates and ex- 
 pounders. From their mutual contact and reciprocal influence pro- 
 ceed the best currents in the higher thought and scientific specula- 
 tion of our day. 
 
 It is the purpose of these pages to consider Evolutionism and 
 Idealism with particular reference to Ethics, — their bearing on, spe- 
 cial character in, and general significance for, this most important of 
 the sciences. 3 
 
 1 Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. 1. Introd. p. 1. 
 
 a ibid, p. 2. 
 
 3 "The supreme humau science." (Alexander, Moral Order and Progress, 
 
 P. 200). 
 
. EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 EVOLUTIONISM. 
 
 By evolutionism we mean the ideas and doctrines connected 
 with the general theory of evolution. 
 
 Evolution is the theory of development. It is associated par- 
 ticularly and classically with the name of Herbert Spencer, who may 
 be said, in modern times, to have been its founder and chief ex- 
 ponent, and whose great distinction it is to have elaborated and sys- 
 tematically formulated its ideas, and to have applied them to the 
 whole realm of human knowledge in his monumental life-work, the 
 imposing volumes of the Synthetic Philosophy. 1 
 
 Evolution includes also what is known as Darwinism, which, 
 however, is restricted to the scientific explanation of the development 
 of species in plants and in animals, through struggle for life and 
 variation due to natural selection with resulting survival of the 
 fittest, as set forth by Darwin in his epoch-making work, "The Origin 
 of Species" (1859). Evolution is the broader term referring to the 
 development of the universe. 
 
 Stated briefly, Evolution is the development of the simple into 
 the complex. In one word, it is "complexity." "Evolution means 
 growing complexity." 2 In Spencer's own more technical language, 
 it is the change "from a simple homogeneity to a complex hetero- 
 geneity." The law is variously stated in Spencer's writings and even 
 itself underwent development 3 in the progress of his thought ; but 
 always with the same fundamental factors, reaching its final, most 
 complete expression in what may be termed the formula of evolution, 
 — "a continuous change from indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to 
 definite, coherent heterogeneity of structure and function, through 
 successive differentiations and integrations." 4 Always it implies 
 growth, progress, development in conformity with the laws of life 
 and through the adjustment of inner relations to outer relations — 
 
 1 Mackintosh, From Comte to Benjamin Kidd, p. 83. 
 
 2 Ibid, p. 67. Schurinan, Import of Darwinism, p. 53. 
 
 3 Hudson. Philosophy of Herbert Spencer, p. 82 ff; also MacPherson, 
 Spencer and Spencerism, p. 48 ff. 
 
 4 Hudson, p. 88. Cf. Spencer, First Principles, Sec. 145. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 7 
 
 which constitutes, indeed, the essence or, at all events, the definition 
 of life. 
 
 The idea of evolution was not absolutely new. 1 It existed al- 
 ready among the ancients, in Hindu Cosmogonies, notably among 
 the Greeks, and was the distinguishing doctrine of Heraclitus, 2 with 
 his famous theory of Becoming. "The general conception of system- 
 atic growth, advance, or orderly progression from matter to life, from 
 the polyp to man, from the atom to the cosmos, was as familiar to 
 Greek thought as to modern evolutionary science. The Greek nat- 
 ural philosophers held that the course of the world consisted in a 
 gradual transition from the indeterminate to the determinate, so that 
 higher and more complex forms of existence follow and depend on 
 the lower and simpler forms." 3 " In 1755 Kant, in his "Theory of 
 The Heavens," in the so-called Nebular Hypothesis, endeavored to 
 trace the evolution of the universe from primitive star-dust to the 
 present cosmos ; 4 and the conception of evolution became through 
 him well-known in German philosophy, and also through the sys- 
 tems of Schelling and Hegel. But it was only after the great biolo- 
 gical investigations of the eighteenth century, and the researches and 
 discoveries in the fields of botany, geology and astronomy ; after the 
 labors of Goethe in Germany, Geoffry St. Hilaire, Lamarck, and 
 Laplace in France, Erasmus Darwin and Lyell in England and 
 particularly Charles Darwin, and the publication of the latter's 
 epoch-making "Origin of Species" (1859), with its theory of natural 
 selection which first put the doctrine of evolution on a scientific 
 basis,^ Darwin being the first to discover an adequate scientific cause 
 to explain the variation of species, and the principle, or as Schurman 
 suggests, "mechanism," 5 of development) that the idea of evolution 
 assumed new and momentous importance, and was applied with 
 thorough-going, scientific exactness to the whole realm of knowledge 
 with most fruitful result and with radical and even revolutionary 
 effect. ^ The idea and the philosophy of evolution have dominated 
 the thought of the latter half of the nineteenth century. All the 
 sciences have been re-written, re-classified, transformed. Its in- 
 fluence has been remarkable, and after half a century is still felt 
 
 1 Schurman, I. of D., p. 43 ff. 
 
 2 Cf. Windleband, Hist, of Phil., p. 47 ff. 
 
 3 Schurman, p. 47. 
 
 4 Ibid, p. 50. Fiske, Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Vol. II., p. 325. 
 
 5 p. 54. 
 
8 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 in most positive ways, with vivifying force, and illuminating and 
 productive power. 
 
 Probably in no realm did the theory of evolution, and what 
 is implied in evolutionism, produce such a tremendous effect, and 
 have such a remarkable influence, as in the sphere of ethics and its 
 allied province of religion. 1 Here, from the first, it encountered the 
 strongest opposition, and met with the fiercest criticism and denuncia- 
 tion. 2 . It was felt by the advocates of the traditional theories of mor- 
 ality and religion, not merely vitally to effect, but completely to un- 
 dermine them, to be thoroughly subversive of their fundamental 
 positions and distinctions, and absolutely destructive of all for which 
 they stood. Its influence upon them was believed to be wholly bane- 
 ful. Evolutionism in the realm of ethics and religion seemed to be 
 synonymous not merely with materialism, but with the rankest 
 sensualism and with atheism. Its leaders and expounders have been 
 held up to the greatest ridicule, subjected to every species of mis- 
 representation, scientific and popular, and have even been regarded 
 as enemies of society and foes of civilization and the race. Every 
 new book which professed to treat morality and religion from the 
 standpoint of evolution was treated with scant courtesy and with 
 ironical and contemptuous disdain ; and that, too, not only by bigots, 
 and ignorant and fanatic persons, but by men with pretensions to 
 scholarship and scientific and philosophical equipment. 3 
 
 In recent years there has been a complete change. The doctrine 
 of evolution, while by no means universally accepted as a fact, has 
 at least commended itself to a constantly increasing number of 
 minds. The idea, even as a "working-principle," has been found of 
 the greatest helpfulness and creative usefulness. And to-day, in the 
 realms of ethics and religion, too, in the most careful and profound 
 works, the idea of evolution is applied, or at least considered, in a 
 wholly dispassionate, calm, and scientific spirit. 4 "Now every year, 
 and almost every month, brings with it a fresh supply of books, 
 pamphlets, and magazine articles on 'The Evolution of Morality,' 
 
 1 Williams. Review *of Evolutional Ethics, p. I. 
 
 2 Macpherson instances the attack of Hugh Miller, p. 88, note. Cf. Bowne's 
 book on Spencer. 
 
 3 Schurman's Kantian Ethics and Ethics of Evolution, published as late 
 as 1881, is not free from this hostile animus. Bixby'l Crisis in Morals is 
 more fair. 
 
 4 T. H. Green. Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 87. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. g 
 
 'L'Evolution de la Morale,' 'Die Evolution der Sittlichkeit,' 
 'Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus,' " x etc. The author of the foregoing 
 quotation has made an independent study of no less than thirteen 
 writers on evolutional ethics, whose books he refers to as a "few" 
 that are "most prominent." Among these, besides Darwin, Wallace, 
 Haeckel, Spencer and Fiske, are Leslie Stephen 2 and S. Alexander. 3 
 In the less than fifteen years since his review was written there have 
 appeared, — to name only the most important, — Huxley's "Evolution 
 and Ethics" (1894), Drummond's "Ascent of Man" (1894), A. Suth- 
 erland's "Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct" (2 Vols. 1898), 
 P. Kropotkin's "Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution" (1902), West- 
 ermarck's "Origin and Development of Moral Ideas" (1906), and 
 "Morals in Evolution : A Study in Comparative Ethics" (L. T. Hob- 
 house, 1907, 2 Vols.) ; also "Darwinism and the Problems of Life" 
 (Conrad Guenther, translated by Joseph McCabe, 1907). 
 
 All of these works treat of ethics as affected by, or viewed from, 
 the standpoint of evolution or development. 
 
 1 Williams, R. of E. E. (1893), p. 2. 
 
 2 Science of Ethics (1882). 
 
 3 Moral Order and Progress (1889). 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS— HERBERT SPENCER. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 Ethical Aim of Spencer's Philosophy. Scientific Character. 
 
 "The application of evolution to morals," remarks Professor 
 Alexander, 1 "may mean only the employment of biological ideas ; or 
 it may mean that morals must be treated as one part of a compre- 
 hensive view of the universe, in which a steady development may be 
 observed from the lowest to the highest phenomena, 2 and a devolp- 
 ment, it may be added, which follows the law of the survival of the 
 fittest." 8 
 
 The essential character of the evolutionary ethics, in all its 
 phases, may best be understood from a study of the ethical writings 
 of Herbert Spencer, their original and typical expounder and "most 
 influential teacher." 4 All the prominent writers on evolutionary 
 morals either derive their theories directly from him or have been 
 largely influenced by his speculations and conclusions. 
 
 Spencer's ethics are to be found, (besides in "Social Statics," his 
 first work, 1850) mainly in his great ethical treatises which form a 
 part of his Synthetic Philosophy, "The Principles of Morals," pub- 
 lished in three volumes (1893). These were divided into parts, of 
 which Part I of Vol. I had already appeared as (substantially the 
 same) the "Data of Ethics" (1876). Part II contained "The Induc- 
 tions of Ethics," while Part III treated of "The Ethics of Individual 
 Life." Part IV constituted "Justice" (published in advance, 1891). 
 Parts V and VI, completing the Ethics, treated of "Negative and 
 Positive Beneficence" (1893). 
 
 These ethical writings formed a part of Spencer's general sys- 
 tem of Evolution, and indeed a highly important, and even a main 
 part. We have warrant for considering them the crown and cul- 
 mination of Spencer's whole system of thinking. In his "Autobio- 
 graphy" 5 he expressly says, "The whole system was at the outset, 
 
 1 M. o. & P., p. 14. 
 
 2 As in Westermarck, Hobhouse; historical ethics. 
 
 3 His own original contribution, regarding the growth of a new ideal 
 as analogous to growth of new species in organic world. His struggle of 
 ideals Mackintosh characterizes as a "bloodless and well-nigh painless Darwin 
 ism." (Fr. C to K., p. 149). 
 
 4 Sidgwick, History of Ethics, p. 255. 
 
 5 Vol. II., p. 369. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. IX 
 
 and has ever continued to be, a basis for a right rule of life, in- 
 dividual and social." Spencer's interest, then, was primarily ethical. 
 I deem this fact most striking, and of the highest importance in 
 properly weighing and estimating Spencer's philosophy, 1 and assign- 
 ing it place and rank among other systems. It was, properly speak- 
 ing, no speculative interest, but a practical bias, that led him to 
 formulate his great laws of thought, and set forth so comprehensively 
 and exhaustively the conditions of existence. The thought is borne 
 in on one more and more that Spencer has a right to be regarded as 
 a great moralist, as one of the greatest ethical teachers of his gener- 
 ation; and this may probably constitute his greatest claim to future 
 remembrance. In the preface to the "Data of Ethics" he says, 
 "Written as far back as 1842 (Spencer was then only twenty-two 
 years old) my first essay, consisting of letters on 'The Proper Sphere 
 of Government,' vaguely indicated what I conceived to be certain 
 general principles of right and wrong in political conduct ; and from 
 that time onward my ultimate purpose, lying behind all proximate 
 purposes, has been that of finding for the principles of right and 
 wrong, in conduct at large, a scientific basis." Could language be 
 plainer or more explicit? From the very beginning of his intel- 
 lectual activity his interest lay in moral questions, and his "ultimate 
 purpose, lying behind all proximate purposes," was to find for the 
 principles of right and wrong in the whole realm of conduct "a 
 scientific basis." This fact, I repeat, I think worthy of the greatest 
 emphasis, and consider of the utmost importance in a true, scien- 
 tific evaluation of the evolutionary system as a whole. It was this 
 part of the task to which he regarded "all the preceding parts as 
 subsidiary." The evolutionary system as a whole, I take it, apart 
 from its intrinsic character, its own special propositions and form- 
 ulations, is to be viewed and judged, also in the light of its end, 
 and to have its special character stamped and marked in accordance 
 with that judgment. Only thus, it seems to me, does one reach the 
 highest scientific estimate, or arrive at a due philosophical appre- 
 ciation of the full import of "evolutionism." Surely that is not science 
 which neglects any of the factors, and only the stultification and abdi- 
 cation of science which neglects one of the highest factors of all. 
 And it shall ever remain a most significant fact that the great 
 
 1 "The constituent elements of an organism can only be truly and ade- 
 quately conceived as rendered what they are by the end realized through the or- 
 ganism." Green, p. 83. 
 
12 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 founder of the evolutionary philosophy was led to his colossal work 
 through interest in ethical questions. 
 
 We must include here Spencer's testimony to the value and 
 need of morality. "Few things can happen more disastrous than the 
 decay and death of a regulative system no longer fit." : Spencer 
 regarded morality as of supreme worth. The dedication of his 
 whole life, as well as — as we have seen — of his whole system, in 
 its behalf, in its scientific establishment and philosophic affirmation 
 and confirmation, is most eloquent proof of this, and constitutes, at 
 the same time, one of the most inspiring chapters in the biography 
 of modern heroism. This fact, too, is to be taken into account in 
 our judgment and full final evaluation of "evolutionism," — the life 
 and character of its leaders and exponents. 2 The worth of Science 
 as a whole is judged, and rightly judged, by its effects and in- 
 fluence upon the devotees of science, upon those engaged in scien- 
 tific investigations and labors, theoretical and practical ; 3 and in the 
 same way the precise and complete character of this department of 
 scientific thought, this division of scientific ideas, this area of philo- 
 sophy which we call "Evolutionism," can be fully determined only by 
 a knowledge of the lives and characters of its chief promulgators 
 and illustrators. Judged in the light of Spencer's life-long devotion, 
 in spite of almost constant invalidism, to his aims (not to mention 
 other matters such as his probably deliberately chosen celibacy, sacri- 
 fice of a worldly career that would no doubt have been as prosperous 
 as brilliant), Spencer's labors for the support and not the subversal 
 or undermining 4 of morality and ethics, 5 take on the highest char- 
 acter and positively assume the proportions of the grand and the 
 heroic. 8 
 
 Spencer's system, broadly characterized, is what Martineau calls 
 Hedonistic Utilitarian. It is opposed to asceticism, is against what he 
 terms the "impossible," against "rules that cannot be obeyed." He 
 pleads for a sane and scientific morality, in accordance with the 
 laws of life and the essential conditions of existence. Spencer rec- 
 
 1 Data of Ethics, preface. 
 
 2 Cf. Sidgwick, H. of E., p. 31. 
 
 3 Spencer's Essay, "What Knowledge Is of Most Worth." 
 
 4 As in Nietzsche with his "Herren-Moral," regarding ordinary morality 
 as "Slave-Morality." 
 
 5 Same may be said of his system's final effect upon religion. See Auto- 
 biography, Vol. IL, p. 547. 
 
 6 Crapsey calls Darwin a "saint." (Religion and Politics, p. 292). 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 13 
 
 ognizes his system's "essential likeness" to that- of a certain class 
 who yet criticise his own, because of a difference of derivation. 
 "Ethical principles otherwise derived by them, coincide with ethical 
 principles scientifically derived." 1 The difference, he insists, is one 
 of origin, not of content. He resents the imputation that he is an 
 "atheist" if he diverges from "established theological dogma," and 
 he indignantly repudiates the name "materialist." There is no fund- 
 amental antagonism, he maintains, in the differences that exist be- 
 tween "natural morality" and what he calls "supernatural morality." 
 The words "secularization of morals,"- in my opinion, best 
 describe Spencer's ethical system. Morality is not destroyed or 
 invalidated, as it is in the systems of some thinkers, Nietzsche for 
 instance. Spencer's moral rules are practically those of the current 
 ethical code. He speaks of their having a "general authority to be 
 reverently recognized." 5 Justice, kindness, truth, virtue, chastity, 
 duty, peace, perfection, even the ideal, are cardinal words in his 
 system also, have all the force and value for Spencer that they have 
 for the most pronounced traditional moralist. The difference is 
 that these ideas are arrived at through a process of reasoning, that 
 is, are scientifically deduced and philosophically formulated and 
 validated. "Their dictates have to be interpreted and made definite 
 by science." 4 The method of this "analysis" and synthesis and con- 
 sequent "secularization" we shall now proceed to show. And, first, 
 let us examine Spencer's account of the origin of the moral sense 
 itself. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 ORIGIN OF THE MORAL SENSE. 
 
 Throughout the whole of human conduct there are necessary 
 relations of cause and effect, and from these are derived all moral 
 rules, however much these may be proximately derived from moral 
 intuitions. " 
 
 Spencer's explanation of moral intuitions is unique, and con- 
 
 1 D. of E., preface. 
 L' Ibid. 
 
 3 D. of E., sec. 63. 
 
 4 Ibid. 
 
 B [bid, sec. 20. 
 
I4 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 stitutes a positive contribution to modern thought in the 
 reconciliation of the views of the empirical psychologists repre- 
 sented by Locke and those of the older intuitionists. Spencer 
 makes original use of the Lamarckian doctrine of "use-inheritance." 
 In a letter to Mr. Mill, published in Bain's "Mental and Moral 
 Science," * we find the following passages : 
 
 "Moral intuitions are the results of accumulated experiences of 
 utility, gradually organized and inherited," and "come to be quite 
 independent of conscious experience." . . . "The experiences of 
 utility, organized and consolidated through all past experience of 
 the human race, have been producing nervous modifications which 
 by continued transmission and accumulation, have become in us 
 certain faculties of moral intuition, certain emotions corresponding 
 to right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis in the 
 individual experience of utility." 
 
 To the above, Spencer added in the "Data of Ethics," 2 — "The 
 evolution-hypothesis thus enables us to reconcile opposed theories of 
 knowledge. For, as the doctrine of innate forms of intellectual 
 intuition falls into harmony with the experimental doctrine, when 
 we recognize the production of intellectual faculties by inheritance 
 of effects wrought by experience; so the doctrine of innate powers 
 of moral perception becomes congruous with the utilitarian doctrine, 
 when it is seen that preferences and aversions are rendered organic 
 by inheritance of the effects of pleasurable and painful experiences in 
 progenitors." 3 
 
 These intuitions are the slowly-organized results of experiences 
 received by the race while living in the presence of the conditions to 
 the achievement of the highest life. 4 
 
 The origin of moral obligation is the sentiment of duty in gen- 
 eral, which latter is an abstract sentiment generated in a manner 
 analogous to that in which abstract ideas are generated. 5 
 
 Accumulated experiences have produced the consciousness that 
 guidance of feelings which refer to remote and general results is 
 usually more conducive to welfare than guidance by feelings to 
 be immediately gratified. 6 The common character of feelings that 
 
 1 Third edition, p. 721. 
 
 2 Sec. 46. 
 
 3 Cf. Fiske. O. of C. P., Vol. II., Chapter XXII. 
 
 4 D. of E., Sec. 63. 
 
 5 D. of E., Sec. 47. 
 
 6 Ibid. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. ,5 
 
 prompt honesty, truthfulness, diligence, providence, etc., which men 
 find to be better prompters than the appetites and simple impulses, 
 is that they are all complex, re-representative feelings, occupied 
 with the future rather than the present. Therefore, the idea of 
 authoritativeness comes to be connected with feelings having these 
 traits, and this idea of authoritativeness is one element in the ab- 
 stract consciousness of duty. 1 
 
 Another element is co-erciveness. This originates from the ex- 
 perience of political, religious, and social restraints that have estab- 
 lished themselves in the course of civilization. 
 
 In Spencer's account of the political, religious and social re- 
 straints lies the core of his teaching with regard to the origin of the 
 moral consciousness. His theory is as follows: 
 
 The essential trait in the moral consciousness is the control of 
 some feeling or feelings by some other feeling or feelings. As social 
 evolution renders the life more complex, the restraints many and 
 strong, the evils of impulsive conduct marked, and the comforts to 
 be gained by providing for the future tolerably certain, there come 
 experiences numerous enough to make familiar the benefits of 
 subordinating the simpler feelings to the more complex ones. 
 
 There also arises sufficient intellectual power to make an induc- 
 tion from these experiences, followed by a sufficient massing of 
 individual induction into a public and traditional induction im- 
 pressed on each generation. 
 
 This conscious relinquishment of immediate and special good 
 to gain distant and general good is a cardinal trait of the (1) self- 
 restraint called moral; it is also a cardinal trait of the self-restraint 
 originating from (2) fear of visible ruler (political), (3) fear of 
 invisible ruler (religious), and (4) fear of society at large (social.) 
 
 These four are at first practically co-extensive and undistin- 
 guished ; yet in the course of social evolution they differentiate and 
 eventually the moral control with its accompanying conceptions and 
 sentiments emerges independent. The process is as follows : 
 
 In rudest groups, neither political nor religious rule exists. 
 The leading check to immediate satisfaction of each desire as it 
 arises, is the consciousness of the evils which the anger of fellow- 
 savages may entail. First there is only mutual dread of vengeance. 
 
 1 D. of E., Sec. 47. 
 
16 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 Gradually, the fear of the angry chief becomes distinguishable, i. e., 
 political control begins to differentiate. Meanwhile has been de- 
 veloping the ghost theory, fear of the double of the deceasd man, 
 which becomes later fear of the ghosts of dead chiefs, which gives 
 rise to the religious restraint. For a long time these three sets of 
 restraint are co-extensive because they mostly refer to one end — 
 success in war. Killing of enemies becomes both a political and a 
 religious duty. The control of social opinion is directly exercised 
 by praise of the brave and blame of the cowardly and comes to be 
 indirectly exercised by applause of loyalty to ruler and piety to the 
 god. 
 
 The growth of political authority gradually checks the taking 
 of personal satisfaction for injuries. The fact that success in war 
 is endangered if followers fight among themselves is a strong motive 
 for rulers for restraining quarrels; therefore, he forbids aggression 
 and inflicts punishment for disobedience. Political restraints are 
 enforced by religious restraints. Dread of the ghost of the dead ruler 
 produces regard for traditional commands, which eventually acquire 
 sacredness. With further social evolution come further interdicts, 
 until eventually arises a body of civil laws; religious injunctions 
 harmonize with and enforce the political injunctions; while simul- 
 taneously there develops a social sanction for these rules of internal 
 conduct, strengthening the political and religious sanctions. 
 
 Yet the P. R. and S. 1 controls, which are like the moral control 
 in habitually requiring subjection of simple presentative feelings to 
 complex, representative feelings and postponement of present to 
 future, do not constitute the moral control, but are only preparatory 
 to it. From them the moral control evolves. 
 
 The command of the political ruler is first obeyed because it is 
 his command, not from a representation of evil consequences. The 
 sinfulness of breaking divine injunction lies first in the disobedience 
 to God, not in the entailing of injury. Breach of social rules is con- 
 demned as ignoring the world's authority, not as being any essential 
 impropriety. 
 
 The essential truths to be noted are (lst) P. R. and S. controls 
 have evolved with the evolution of society as means to social self- 
 preservation, necessary and mutually congruous. (2nd) The cor- 
 
 1 We shall use these initials for the words Political, Religious and Social. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. I? 
 
 relative internal restraints are representations of remote results 
 which are incidental rather than necessary — a legal penalty, a super- 
 natural punishment, a social reprobation. (3rd) These results are 
 simple and more directly wrought and, therefore, more vividly con- 
 ceived than natural results of action, therefore more potent over 
 undeveloped minds. (4th) The thought of external co-ercion being 
 always joined, there arises the notion of obligation, which so be- 
 comes habitually associated with surrender of immediate special 
 benefits, for the sake of distant, general benefits. (5th) The moral 
 control corresponds in a large measure with the P. R. and S. in 
 respect of its injunctions, and the nature of the mental processes 
 producing conformity to these injunctions, but differs in their special 
 nature. 
 
 For the restraints properly distinguished as moral are unlike 
 these restraints out of which they evolve and with which they are 
 long confounded, in this — they refer, not to extrinsic effects of 
 actions, but to their intrinsic effects. 1 The moral motive differs from 
 the motive with which it is associated, in this — that instead of being 
 constituted by representation of incidental, collateral, non-necessary 
 consequences of acts, it is constituted by representations of conse- 
 quences which the acts naturally produce. 
 
 Therefore, moral feelings are later than the P. R. and S., for 
 only from these lower evolve the higher. Only after P. R. and S. 
 restraints have produced a stable community can there be sufficient 
 experience of the pain which comes of aggression, to cause us to 
 generate that moral aversion constituted by the consciousness of their 
 intrinsically evil results. 
 
 We associate the name "moral" with feelings that are firstly, 
 re-representative ; secondly, concerned with indirect rather than direct 
 effects and generally with remote rather than immediate ; and thirdly, 
 that refer to effects mostly general rather than special. 2 
 
 The above is Spencer's famous account of the origin of the 
 moral sentiment. 
 
 Spencer alludes to Dr. Bain's ascribing the feeling of moral 
 obligation as due to the effects of punishment inflicted by law and 
 public opinion, and agrees with him to the extent of thinking that 
 
 1 D. of E., Sec. 46. 
 2. D. of E., Sec. 45 ff. 
 
18 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 by them is generated the sense of compulsion which the conscious- 
 ness of duty includes, and which the word "obligation" indicates. 
 He calls attention, however, to an earlier and deeper element, gen- 
 erated as above described, implied by the fact that certain of the 
 higher self-regarding feelings (prudence, economy) have a moral 
 authority in opposition to the simpler self-regarding feelings, show- 
 ing that apart from any thought of factitious penalties, the feeling 
 constituted by representation of the natural penalties has acquired 
 an acknowledged superiority. 
 
 Fears of political and social penalties (and perhaps religious) 
 have generated that sense of co-erciveness which goes along with the 
 thought of postponing present and future to the personal desires and 
 claims of others. This sense of co-erciveness becomes indirectly con- 
 nected with the feelings distinguished as moral. 
 
 "For since the P. R. and S. restraining motives are mainly 
 formed of represented future results and since the moral restraining 
 motive is mainly formed of represented future results, it happens 
 that the representations, having much in common, and being often 
 aroused at the same time, the fear joined with three sets of them 
 becomes, by association, joined with the forth. Thinking of the 
 extrinsic effects of a forbidden act, excites a dread which continues 
 present while the intrinsic effects of the act are thought of; and 
 being thus linked to these intrinsic effects causes a vague sense of 
 moral compulsion" l 
 
 With this ingenious account of the rise of the moral sentiment 
 is joined the startling conclusion that the sense of duty or moral 
 obligation is transitory and will diminish as fast as moralization in- 
 creases. As the moral motive becomes distinct and predominant it 
 loses the associated consciousness as above described and the feeling 
 of obligation fades. 
 
 "With complete adaption to the social state that element in 
 the moral consciousness which is expressed by the word "obligation" 
 will disappear. The highest actions required for the harmonious 
 carrying on of life will be as much a matter of course as are these 
 lower actions which the simple desires prompt. In their proper 
 times and places and proportions, the moral sentiments will guide 
 men just as spontaneously and adequately as now do the sensa- 
 tions." 2 
 
 1 D. of E M Sec. 47. 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. Ig 
 
 In other words, it will be just as natural and agreeable to do 
 right, as for a person of healthy appetite to eat. "The pleasures 
 and pains which the moral sentiments originate will, like bodily 
 pleasures and pains, become incentives and deterrents so adjusted in 
 their strength to the needs that the moral conduct will be the nat- 
 ural conduct." 1 
 
 PART III. 
 
 SPENCERS UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 It is sufficiently plain from the account that has already been 
 given that Spencer is a Utilitarian. His system is Hedonistic Util- 
 itarianism. In the above analysis the moral intuitions are explained 
 as the result of accumulated experiences of utility. Utilitarian con- 
 siderations are at the basis of Spencer's whole system. Spencer ex- 
 plicitly avows himself as of that school. Because of his criticism, 
 in "Social Statics," of the empirical utilitarianism of Bentham, he 
 was accused by Mill of being an anti-utilitarian ; in a letter to Mill, 
 published in Bain's "Mental and Moral Science," 2 he denies this in 
 the following language. "I have never regarded myself as an anti- 
 utilitarian. My dissent from the doctrine of utility as commonly 
 understood, concerns not the object to be reached by men but the 
 method of reaching it. While I admit that happiness is the ultimate 
 end to be contemplated, I do not admit that it should be the proxi- 
 mate end. The expediency-philosophy having concluded that hap- 
 piness is a thing to be achieved, assumes that morality has no other 
 business than empirically to generalize the results of conduct and 
 to supply for the guidance of conduct nothing more than its em- 
 pirical generalizations." 
 
 "But the view for which I contend is that Morality properly 
 co-called — the science of right conduct — has for its object to deter- 
 mine how and why certain modes of conduct are detrimental, and 
 certain other modes beneficial. These good and bad results cannot 
 be accidental, but must be necessary consequences of the constitution 
 of things: and I conceive it to be the business of Moral Science to 
 deduce from the laws of life and the conditions of existence, what 
 kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness and what 
 
 1 D. of E., Sec. 48. 
 
 2 P. 307. Quoted in part in the Data of Ethics. 
 
20 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 kinds to produce unhappiness. Having done this, its deductions 
 are to be recognized as laws of conduct; and are to be conformed to 
 irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness or misery." 
 
 In the above, the laws of conduct are to be deduced from the 
 tendency of actions, ultimately if not proximately, to produce hap- 
 piness. Spencer elsewhere says explicitly, "Analysing the conditions 
 of complete living necessitates the recognition of happiness for each 
 and all as the end to be achieved by fulfilment of these conditions." r 
 "The ultimate supreme end" is "Happiness special and general." 
 "Right and wrong as conceived by us can exist only in relation to 
 the actions of creatures capable of pleasures and pains." 2 
 
 Conduct is good or bad, according to Spencer, according as the 
 total effects are pleasurable or painful. "The good is invariably 
 the pleasurable." "Pleasure somewhere, at sometime, to some being 
 or beings, is an inexpugnable element of the conception of moral 
 aim." 3 "No school can avoid taking for the ultimate moral aim a 
 desirable state of feeling, called by whatever name — gratification, 
 enjoyment, happiness." 
 
 Life is good or bad according as it does or does not leave a sur- 
 plus of agreeable feeling. "We regard as good the conduct further- 
 ing self-preservation and as bad the conduct tending to self-destruc- 
 tion." The establishment of an associated state both makes possible 
 and requires a form of conduct such that life may be completed in 
 each and his offspring, not only without preventing completion of 
 it in others, but with furtherance of it in others. The aim of mor- 
 ality is life, of absolute morality is complete life. 4 " Ethics is the 
 "laws of right living at large." Beyond the conduct commonly ap- 
 proved or reprobated as right or wrong it includes all conduct which 
 furthers or hinders, directly or indirectly, the welfare of self and 
 others. 5 The conduct called good rises to the conduct conceived as 
 best, when it fulfills all three classes of ends at the same time — 
 "greatest totality of life in self, in offspring, and in fellow-man." 
 
 It is quite consistent to assert that happiness is the ultimate 
 aim of action and at the same time to deny that it can be reached 
 by making it the immediate aim. What constitutes happiness is 
 more difficult to determine than what constitutes the means of its 
 
 1 D. of E., See. 63. 
 
 2 Ibid, Sec. 100. 
 
 3 Ibid, See. 16. 
 
 4 Essay on Prison Ethics (Essays, p. 269). 
 
 5 D. of E., Sec. 109. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 21 
 
 attainment. Since evolution has been and still is working towards 
 the highest life, it follows "that conformity to those principles by 
 which the highest life is achieved is furtherance of that end." 
 
 That happiness is the supreme end is beyond question true, for 
 it is the concomitant of that highest life which every theory of 
 moral guidance has distinctly or vaguely in view. 1 Those ethical 
 systems which make virtue, right, obligation, the cardinal aims are 
 complementary to those which make welfare, happiness, pleasure, 
 the cardinal aim. 
 
 General happiness is to be achieved mainly through the adequate 
 pursuit of their own happiness by individuals ; while, reciprocally, the 
 happiness of individuals is to be achieved, in part, by their pursuit 
 of the general happiness. 
 
 When conditions require any class of actions to be relatively 
 great, there will arise relatively great pleasure accompanying that 
 class of activities. 
 
 All conduct is acts adjusted to ends. Our use of the words 
 good or bad with respect to conduct under its ethical aspect, has 
 regard to the efficiency or non m efficiency of adjustments of acts to 
 ends. Always those acts are good or bad according as they are well 
 or ill-adapted to ends. All the actions conducive to self-welfare and 
 the welfare of the species will be pleasurable. 2 
 
 PART IV. 
 
 JUSTICE. 
 
 In the foregoing we have seen that, according to Spencer, hap- 
 piness is the end of life. This idea is repeated with unwearied em- 
 phasis in all his work. Whether called, as in "Social Statics," "the 
 Divine idea," regarded as the will and purpose of God, or divested, 
 as it was later, of all theological or theistic implications, 3 happiness, 
 individual and social, happiness in the greatest possible degree, re- 
 mained for Spencer the supreme end of all life and all evolutionary 
 development. In this sense, Spencer was indeed a hedonist of the 
 most pronounced type. 
 
 But how is happiness, the end of life, to Be attained^ In 
 
 1 [bid, Bee 63. 
 
 2 Negative and Positive Beneficence, p. 331. 
 
 3 See note d on answer to Sidgwick, Soc. Stat., p. 90. 
 
22 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 Spencer's first ethical work, "Social Statics," this matter was already 
 fully discussed and philosophically developed. 
 
 Happiness consists in gratification, which depends upon due ex- 
 ercise of the faculties. The latter implies freedom, for it is only 
 as men are free that they can exercise their several faculties. Free- 
 dom is thus the primary condition. But since all have a right to 
 happiness, it follows that the freedom of each must be compatible 
 with the freedom of all the rest. The spheres of activity must not 
 intrench upon one another. Consequently the liberty of each must 
 be limited, but limited only by the like liberty of all. From this 
 condition arises what is called justice, variously defined by Spencer, 
 but essentially the same in the possession of this common character- 
 istic of the recognition of the sphere of each bounded only by the 
 like or similar sphere of all. 1 In that volume of the Ethics which 
 bears the name of "Justice" 2 it is frequently termed "mutual re- 
 straint," though more fully described in the sentence, — which ap- 
 plies as a rule, without qualification, in both human and sub-human 
 life — "Each individual ought to be subject to the effects of its own 
 nature and resulting conduct." In the ratio between conduct and 
 consequence lies justice. The treatment here is somewhat different 
 than in his earlier works, but here, too, the "formula of justice" is 
 "Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes 
 not the equal freedom of any other man." 3 In "Social Statics" this is 
 expressed in virtually identical language. 4 Justice is equalness, — 
 hence the word equity; and it is a source of considerable pride to 
 Spencer, that in this mental admeasurement of moral quantities, his 
 system approaches so nearly to the geometrical, and in its synthetic 
 development, "partakes of the character of an exact science." 5 For 
 Spencer applies this principle of "equalness" to the whole range of 
 human affairs. He distinguishes between equality and inequality, 
 as applied, the one to the "bounds," the other to the "benefits" — i. e. 
 "The equality concerns the mutually limited sphere of action which 
 must be maintained if associated men are to co-operate harmoniously. 
 The inequality concerns the results which each may achieve by car- 
 rying on his actions within the implied limits. 6 Whereas unequal 
 
 1 Cf. the definition of justice in the Pandects as "Perpetua voluntas suum 
 cuique." 
 
 2 Part IV. of the Morals, published in advance of Pts. II. and III., 1891. 
 
 3 Justice, p. 46. 
 
 4 Soc. Stat., p. 121. 
 
 5 Ibid, p. 501. 
 
 6 Justice, p. 43. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 23 
 
 benefits must result since, according to the law of justice each is to 
 take the consequences of his own nature which is different in each, 
 the limits in which man may exercise his own powers must be 
 kept open and uninterfered with except as restricted by the equal 
 claims of others." This teaching of justice is basic and central to 
 the whole system of evolutionary moral philosophy. Spencer calls 
 it "the supreme moral law." ' He speaks everywhere of its funda- 
 mental radical importance. It is the primary principle of conduct. 
 From it, as corollaries, are deduced all the moral rules and the 
 ethical injunctions of society. The sacredness of life, the inviola- 
 bility of person, of property, of reputation, all the rights of individ- 
 uals, and the rules embodying these rights and prohibiting their 
 transgression are derived from this fundamental principle of justice. 
 "Justice we hold to be higher generosity," writes Spencer. 2 "The 
 motive causing a generous act has reference to effects of a more con- 
 crete, special and proximate kind than the motive to do justice which 
 beyond the proximate effects, usually themselves less concrete than 
 those that generosity contemplates, includes a consciousness of the 
 distant, involved, diffused effects of maintaining equitable relations." 3 
 The practical part of Spencer's teaching of justice is against social- 
 ism and communism and every kind of paternalism. He opposes 
 state-interference of every sort and holds that the proper function 
 of government is precisely this of maintaining justice. Spencer is 
 an advocate of the most extreme individualism. With Coleridge he 
 believes the true idea of life to be "the tendency to individuation." 
 This is highest in the moral sphere. "What we call the moral law — 
 the law of equal freedom — is the law under which individuation 
 becomes perfect; and ability to recognize and act up to this law is 
 the final endowment of humanity." 4 "Only by entire fulfilment of 
 the moral law can life become complete ; and, all life whatever may 
 be denned as a quality, of which aptitude to fulfill this law is the 
 highest manifestation." 5 
 
 "Such a moral sentiment as abstract justice," writes Spencer, 6 
 "which is offended not only by material injuries done to men, but 
 also by political arrangments that place them at a disadvantage, 
 can evolve only after the social stage reached gives familiar expe- 
 
 1 Justice, p. 155. 
 
 2 D. of E., Sec. 46. 
 
 3 Ibid. 
 
 4 Soc. Stat., p. 481. 
 
 5 Ibid, p. 476. 
 
 6 D. of E., Sec. 46. 
 
24 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 rience, both of the pains flowing directly from injustices, and also 
 of those flowing indirectly from the class privileges which make 
 injustices easy." 
 
 The sentiment of justice Spencer regards "as nothing but a sym- 
 pathetic affection of the instinct of personal rights, — a sort of re- 
 flex function of it." x Applying and extending to his own doctrine 
 of a Moral Sense Adam Smith's famous doctrine of Sympathy, as 
 found in his "Theory of the Moral Sentiments," as "a faculty whose 
 function it is to excite in each being the emotion displayed by sur- 
 rounding ones, a faculty which awakens a fellow feeling with the 
 passions of others," Spencer reaches the conclusion that "justice and 
 beneficence" (as already previously hinted), 2 "have a common root." 3 
 "All the actions properly classed under the one, and which we de- 
 scribe as fair, equitable, upright, spring from the sympathetic ex- 
 citement of the instinct of personal rights; whilst those usually 
 grouped under the other as mercy, charity, good-nature, generosity, 
 amiability, considerateness, are due to the action of Sympathy upon 
 one or more of the other feelings." 
 
 Spencer ridicules Bentham's derivation of the sense of justice 
 from the idea of benefits. To assert that the sense of justice arises 
 from a conviction of benefit is as absurd as to "conclude that hunger 
 springs from a conviction of the benefit of eating, or that love of 
 offspring is a result of the wish to maintain the species !" * 
 
 In the "Data of Ethics" Spencer furnishes us with a "physical 
 analogy" of this "cardinal truth" of justice. He shows how, in any 
 mass of matter, to preserve internal equilibrium throughout the 
 mass of molecules, the mutual limitations of their activities must 
 be everywhere alike. 5 To social equilibrium there is the same pre- 
 requisite which must be fulfilled before complete life, i. e., greatest 
 happiness, can be attained in any society. "Maintenance of equitable 
 relations between men is the condition to attainment of greatest hap- 
 piness in all societies, however much the greatest happiness attain- 
 able in each may differ in nature or amount, or both." 6 
 
 Thus though happiness is the great end of individuals and of 
 societies, it can be attained only in one way, viz., through justice, 
 the observance and maintenance of equitable relations. 
 
 1 Soc. Stat., p. 116. 
 
 2 Ibid, p. 86. 
 
 3 Ibid, p. 116. 
 
 4 Ibid, p. 111. 
 
 5 Ibid, p. 197. 
 
 6 Ibid, p. 198. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 25 
 
 PART V. 
 
 NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE 
 BENEFICENCE. 
 
 In the preface to Vol. I of the "Principles of Ethics," Spencer 
 is led to remark that he is especially anxious to write the sections 
 on Negative and Positive Beneficence x because, in the absence of 
 them, the divisions at present published will leave, in nearly all 
 minds, a very 'erroneous impression respecting the general tone of 
 Evolutionary Ethics. "In its full scope, the moral system to be set 
 forth unites sternness with kindness; but thus far attention has been 
 drawn almost wholly to the sternness." Extreme missapprehension 
 and gross misstatement, he declares, have hence resulted. 
 
 A gap remains to be filled up, " a further advance not yet even 
 hinted." "For beyond so behaving that each achieves his ends with- 
 out preventing others from achieving their ends, the members of a 
 society may give mutual help in the achievement of ends." 2 Evo- 
 lutionary ethics are not complete without an account of Negative 
 and Positive Beneficence. Here, as in other, regarded probably 
 as higher, systems the cap-stone is what commonly passes under the 
 name of love. Love is the fulfilment of the evolutionary law. "If, 
 either indirectly by individual co-operation or directly by volunteered 
 aid, fellow-citizens can make easier for one another the adjustments 
 of acts to ends, then their conduct assumes a still higher phase of 
 evolution: since whatever facilitates the making of adjustments by 
 each, increases the totality of the adjustments made, and serves to 
 render the lives of all more complete." 3 
 
 While recognizing the fundamental character of justice as a 
 rule of conduct and a means of happiness, Spencer also accords due 
 place to the "supplementary" virtue of beneficence. Beneficence is a 
 sympathetic recognition of others' claims to receive aid in the ob- 
 tainment of products and in the effective carrying on of their lives. 
 The highest form of life, individual and social, is not achievable 
 nor is the fullest measure of happiness obtained under a reign of 
 justice only; but there must be joined with it a reign of beneficence. 
 We may compare with this the statement in the "Data of Ethics" 4 
 
 1 Published afterwards as I'ts. V. aud VI. (1803). 
 
 2 D. of E.. Bee. a ^^^Z7^T^> 
 8 Ibid. /*0<* X !* V 
 
 4 Ibid, Sec :>\. / V* Q f T " r - _ w 
 
 V ... 
 
26 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 that "the limit of evolution of conduct is not reached until beyond 
 avoidance of direct and indirect injuries to others, there are spontane- 
 ous efforts to further the welfare of others." The cup of happiness is 
 not full to the brim until in addition to the happiness arising from 
 non-interference by others is added the happiness through their po- 
 sitive and direct efforts. The first is Negative, the second is Positive, 
 Beneficence. 
 
 "The requirements of equity must be supplemented by the 
 promptings of kindness." 1 "Daily experiences prove that every one 
 would suffer many evils and lose many goods, did none give him un- 
 paid assistance." 2 Furthering the happiness of others, Spencer calls 
 positive beneficence. "The highest life" is reached "only when, besides 
 helping to complete one another's lives by specified reciprocities of 
 aid, men otherwise help to complete one another's lives." 3 "The social 
 man has not reached that harmonization of constitution with con- 
 ditions forming the limit of evolution, so long as there remains 
 space for the growth of faculties which, by their exercise, bring 
 positive benefits to others and satisfaction to self.'' 4 Recognizing 
 the limits set to each by the presence of others and not infringing 
 on the latter's rights is Negative Beneficence. But "if the presence 
 of fellow-men, while putting certain limits to each man's sphere 
 of activity, opens certain other spheres of activity, in which feelings, 
 while achieving their gratification, do not diminish but add to the 
 gratification of others, then such spheres will inevitably b* occu- 
 pied." 5 In this way Spencer makes room for the exercise of kind- 
 ness which is included under the name of positive beneficence. Thus 
 kindness, mercy, love are words spoken also by evolution although, 
 as Spencer remarks rather regretfully and with confessed disap- 
 pointment, not so directly derived from evolutionary principles as 
 he had hoped. 6 "Altruism," he holds, "is no less primordial than 
 self-preservation," 7 and altruistic actions include both justice and 
 beneficence, the root of both of which is sympathy. 8 The enforce- 
 ment of justice Spencer regards as a public function, while the ex- 
 ercise of beneficence must be a private function. 9 When directed 
 
 1 Neg. and Pos. B., p. 270. 
 
 2 D. of E., Sec. 55. 
 
 3 Ibid, Sec. 56. 
 
 4 Ibid, Sec. 55. 
 
 5 Ibid, Sec. 55. 
 
 6 N. and P. B., preface. 
 
 7 D. of E., Sec. 76. 
 
 8 N. and P. B., p. 268. 
 
 9 Ibid, p. 271. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 27 
 
 towards the poor it is called benevolence. 1 Beneficence should be 
 spontaneous. Beneficence when strained ceases to be beneficence. 2 In 
 general, parental conduct exemplifies beneficence more than any 
 other conduct. 3 But "after the conduct which is of individual con- 
 cern only and affects others in but remote ways, if at all, and after 
 the conduct comprehended under the head of justice, which sets 
 forth restrains on individual life imposed by social life; nearly all 
 the remainder of conduct becomes the subject matter of beneficence, 
 negative and positive. For nearly all this remainder of conduct, 
 pleasurably or painfully affects others from hour to hour." 4 
 
 The largest field, then, according to Spencer, remains for the 
 exercise of the altruistic sentiments. 
 
 The "chief temporary function" is for beneficence to mitigate 
 the sufferings caused by the transition from the present, imperfect, 
 militant-industrial state (with its ethics of enmity) to the future 
 perfect social state, which we are gradually approaching (with its 
 ethics of amity). "Or rather, let us say, to ward off its superfluous 
 sufferings." 5 
 
 "The beneficence which takes into account not only the imme- 
 diate and remote results to the individual but also the results to 
 posterity and to society at large is best." 6 
 
 Thus the evolutionary ethics, like the higher, universalistic 
 utilitarianism of Mill, issues in the highest altruism. It culminates 
 in love, 7 and finds its crowning teaching in the injunction, expli- 
 citly quoted by Mill, 8 that bids us "love our neighbor as ourself." 9 
 
 1 N. and P. B., p. 391. 
 
 2 Ibid, p. 342; p. 275. 
 
 3 Ibid, p. 342. 
 
 4 Ibid, p. 422. 
 
 5 Ibid, p. 430. 
 
 6 Ibid. 
 
 7 Ibid, p. 270. 
 
 8 Utilitarianism, p. 25. 
 
 9 We find significant here, whatever may be its full justice, Martineau's 
 remark that "the representatives of this (Hedonistic Utilitarian) philosophy 
 have in truth — greatly to their honor — theorized in one language an< i f e it | n 
 another; and have retained ideal conceptions of a scale of good and admira- 
 tion for types of character, for which their doctrines can find no corresponding 
 place." (T. of E. T., Vol. II., p. 424.) 
 
2 8 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IX ETHICS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF ETHICS. 
 
 The doctrine of sympathy plays an immense part in evolution- 
 ism, "the all-important emotion of sympathy" Darwin 1 calls it. Dar- 
 win was the first to apply it to the explanation of the moral nature 
 of man, to describe what we have called in this chapter, "the evolu- 
 tion of ethics." 2 He was the pioneer of those who assign a purely 
 naturalistic origin to morality. In Chap. IV of the "Descent of 
 Man," Darwin makes the first attempt to derive the moral sense 
 in man from the lower animals, through the social instinct and the 
 wortyng of "natural selection" combined with the growth of intelli- 
 gence in man. The social instinct he regards as an extension of 
 the parental and filial affections through habit and natural selec- 
 tion. Sympathy, fidelity and courage, implied in mutual aid and 
 defense, he regards as probably acquired by the same means. Of 
 two tribes, the one more courageous, sympathetic and faithful, mu- 
 tually helpful and defensive, would succeed better and conquer 
 others ; it would spread and be widely victorious, and thus, through 
 natural selection, social and moral qualities would advance and be 
 diffused throughout the world. The process, even as tentatively 
 sketched by Darwin, is very complex, involving many factors, such 
 as "the approbation of others — the strengthening of sympathies by 
 , habit — example and imitation — reason — experience, and even self- 
 interest — instruction during youth and religious feelings ;" 3 but the 
 foundation is sympathy, enforced and rendered increasingly power- 
 ful through natural selection. 
 
 What Darwin tentatively advanced has been elaborated and 
 illustrated with a wealth of detail by Alexander Sutherland in his 
 celebrated account of the origin and rise of the moral instinct. Fol- 
 lowing Darwin he explains the growth of the moral feelings, and 
 the sentiment of right, duty, etc., as due wholly to sympathy, orig- 
 inating in the parental and conjugal affections, which he traces back 
 to their feeble beginnings in the lowest animals, and which, through 
 a gradually ascending scale, become the rules of right and the 
 
 1 Descent of Man, Chap. IV. 
 
 _' In the sense of the evolution of the ethical sentiment. 
 
 3 Williams, R. of E. B., ]>. 12. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 2g 
 
 principles of even an ideal morality; though morality at its best is 
 but one method in race preservation, only one factor, though the 
 highest and best, in the evolution of the universe. Morality is 
 "peri-hestic," originating in the family, 1 although through an ex- 
 tension of sympathy which is but a further development of conjugal 
 and parental love, it becomes "aphestic," i. e., operative outside of the 
 immediate family circle and made to include, not merely husband 
 and wife and children, brothers and sisters and all blood relations, 
 but the members of society in general in ever widening groups, as 
 social unions become larger, as they ever tend to do through the 
 constant increase of sympathy due to the elimination of the unsym- 
 pathetic by natural selection, and the production of superior types 
 with finer nerve-susceptibility, through the diminution of offspring 
 — with which goes greater parental care. Morality is but sympathy, 
 and the average sympathy as expressed at any time in public opin- 
 ion, custom, law constitutes duty, which derives its binding character 
 from having existed in us from an unremembered time, and grows 
 constantly stronger as the same social sympathies receive sanction 
 and expression, generation after generation. Inward morality, as 
 seen in the feeling of self-respect, is similarly explained as a man's 
 applying external standards to judge himself; and the right is re- 
 garded as a continual and reasonable compromise of a man's selfish 
 instincts with the moral or unselfish. 
 
 Sutherland's account, which is highly interesting, because of 
 its great importance given more in detail, is as follows. 
 
 He finds the underlying feature of the daily history of animal 
 life to be one continuous and stupendous slaughter, millions of 
 creatures perishing that one may exist. It is only through stupend- 
 ous fertility and the development of qualities procuring more or less 
 immunity that any given species can continue to exist. The few 
 survivors restock the world, who though limited in number are bet- 
 ter protected. Two surviving cod, for instance, out of the millions 
 hatched, would keep the species constant. In an average of 75 
 species of fishes, there are 646,000 eggs to each female. Out of 
 300,000 of these, with no help, care, or protection of the young, only 
 one will reach maturity. Where there is an advance in nerve de- 
 velopment, leading to a nobler type, chance of survival is the small- 
 est, and there is invariably some little manifestation of parental 
 
 l Cf. Qreen, Prolegomena, p. 257. Bee also infra.. Chap. VI., i>. •*»'.>. 
 
3 o EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 care. In some fishes that have a pouch beneath the body (syngno- 
 thidae), the young have the instinct of returning for several days 
 to the parental shelter. 1 Two much more promising courses are 
 nest-building and hatching of eggs in the body of the female. "In 
 the struggle for existence an immense premium is placed upon par- 
 ental care, and not until this has been developed can the higher 
 types become possible." 2 A prime feature of the development is the 
 steady diminution in number of offspring as parental care increases. 
 The average per annum is of amphibia 441, reptiles 17, birds 5, 
 mammals 3.2 , higher mammals 1.3, and in apes and mankind one 
 in every two years. Only the development of remarkable faculties 
 could save the human race from destruction with only one per 
 annum. The progress most essential is parental care, and there 
 is no gap throughout the history of life from love of fish to affec- 
 tion of father and mother. There is no indication in either fish or 
 reptile even in the highest grade of that helplessness at birth which 
 is the concomitant of any notable degree of conscious parental 
 care. 3 Slowly-unfolding maturity, essential to the finest nerve- 
 organism, seems to involve an early period of helplessness demand- 
 ing an instinct of self-sacrifice on the part of the mother. This is 
 only primitive in fish and reptiles. So far there is no hint of af- 
 fection. That begins with the mother' sympathy which in mammals 
 is incalculably slow, in birds more rapid, "the creeping growth of 
 those sweeter feelings that alone make life worth living." 4 High 
 and nesting birds are utterly dependent on their parents for food 
 and "it is a likely thing that elevated nests were concomitant with 
 helpless youth, parental affection, and an increasing scope for 
 growth of intelligence." 5 In birds of the six most gifted orders, 
 whose young are hatched in the most abject helplessness, parental 
 love is poured out in floods of unmeasured self-sacrifice. There is 
 a gracious charm of family life and with it, by no mere chance, 
 comes "that delight in throbbing melody which proclaims the fullest 
 tide of joyous life." 6 Male and female unite in tender care and 
 show also steady attachment to each other. They construct re- 
 markably beautiful nests, showing adaptive intelligence. The more 
 highly developed the bird, the more helpless the young at birth; 
 
 1 Sutherland, Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct, Vol. I., p. 33. 
 
 2 Ibid, p. 40. 
 
 3 Ibid, p. 52. 
 
 4 Ibid, p. 53. 
 
 5 Ibid, p. 63. 
 
 6 Ibid, p. ai. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 3i 
 
 the parrot, the most intelligent of birds, being ninety days depend- 
 ent. There are increasing tendencies to prolongation of family life, 
 which is the ultimate basis of moral ideas. The nest life of one of 
 those higher birds is marked by many graces of indubitably moral 
 character, the conjugal tenderness of mated pair and unwearied 
 self-sacrifice in ministering to offspring being "ethically beautiful." 
 Growing intelligence makes the young more and more dependent 
 upon family and social union. 1 In mammals, the period of gestation 
 of the non-deciduous Placentalia is remarkably long, — from 150 
 days in sheep, goat or ibex, to 280 days in cow, bison, stag, or yak; 
 the result of which is that the young are in remarkably complete 
 condition, well-equipped for survival in size, speed, formidable horns 
 and tusks ; but efficiency is doubly and trebly assured by a strength 
 and devotion of parental affection almost on a level with the highest 
 in birds. There is a surprising smallness (with few exceptions) in 
 the number of offspring, and therefore the maternal relationship is 
 of a higher order, the source of many charming capacities of affec- 
 tion. The young require different food from the parents, and a 
 strange reflex action begins to develop the mammae or milk-secret- 
 ing organs. In monkeys there is a lengthened period of sucking and 
 an intensity of affection. The connection of the tissues of mother 
 and offspring is more intimate and highly developed in these quad- 
 rumana and in the human species than in any other animal, and the 
 period of gestation is the longest known : and there is the highest 
 standard of unconscious preliminary maternal care, rendering possible 
 the loftiest type of intelligence. "The monkey brings up her young 
 very much in the same way as man, often with excessive tenderness 
 and care, shown especially in combing, carrying, and searching for 
 parasites. Males and females defend the young with bravery, box 
 their ears or cudgel them if they have failed to render obedience. 
 They lead them about in their tender years and afterwards guide 
 them in climbing, running and leaping." 2 In the anthropoid apes 
 is best discerned the coming perfection of Parental Care in the hu- 
 man species. All the details of propagation are entirely similar. 
 The male organs are entirely analogous and in the female there is 
 the first indication of menstrual flow. The placenta and milk glands 
 are entirely analogous. P.' C. approximates closely to that of the 
 savage man. "The young at birth in all apes are taken into the 
 
 1 Ibid, p. 69. 
 
 2 Ibid, p. 93. (Quoted fr. Vogt, Mammalia, p. 44.) 
 
32 KVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IX ETHICS. 
 
 arms of the mother, and there clasped with a fond pride." The 
 maternal tenderness is very touching, "the long hand of the mother 
 stroking back the shaggy hair of the brow, while she looks down 
 with yearning affection into liquid depths of the brown eyes." * Next 
 to the human babe, the infant ape is the most helpless of all new- 
 born creatures. At the head of the highest group, foremost in all 
 respects, stand man. The period of gestation in man is, in pro- 
 portion to size, the longest known; and the union of maternal and 
 foetal tissues is the most complex and the babe is the most helpless 
 of infant creatures. There is greatly-increased nerve complexity. 
 The new-born babe has a brain more than eight times as great (in 
 proportion) as in adults, being l>7th of its body. The care of the 
 naked savage mother is greater than that of any of the lower ani- 
 mals. There is a diminution in the number of offspring (less than 
 one in two years; in civilized the average is less than one in four 
 years) and an increase in the period of maternal devotion. The 
 average period of lactation is iy 2 years, but savage children have 
 been known to suck as old as 5 and 6. "It is in love for the child- 
 ren, concern for their sufferings, delight in their sports, that the 
 more beautifully human creatures begin to display themselves." 2 
 In the lessons of self-sacrifice first learned is the earliest fount of 
 moral feeling. "In the fierce competition of the animated forms of 
 earth, the loftier type, with its prolonged nervous growth, and con- 
 sequently augmented period of helpfulness, can never arise but with 
 concomitant increase of parental care." 3 The fount of maternal 
 feelings is as automatic as the fount of milk, both being biologic 
 features. From the fount of parental emotions, high in the ape, 
 still higher in savage races, grow all the varied virtues which form 
 the pre-eminence of man. With increasing intelligence goes diminu- 
 tion of offspring. Children of smaller families have the better 
 chance. The average number of children is a trifle over four 
 to each marriage. Abortion and infanticide, "the first unlovely 
 marks of reason," check the growth of population. The savage in 
 no way restrains his passion. Infanticide results "from hardness 
 of life rather than from hardness of heart" 4 and is no failure of 
 parental instinct. The savage loves his offspring, and those whom 
 he spares he spoils. Chastity fosters parental care. The educational 
 
 1 Ibid, p. 94. 
 
 2 Ibid, p. '.>'.). 
 
 3 Ibid. 
 
 4 Tylor, Anthropology, p. 427. Quoted by Sutherland, p. 115. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 33 
 
 care of the young, destined to be most notable in the humanizing 
 influence of progress, begins to assert itself. In the barbarian stage 
 there is already a beginning of systematic attempts to form the 
 character. Training, at first, is always of an almost exclusively 
 domestic character. Infanticide gradually dies out with the asser- 
 tion of the more sympathetic side of man's nature. 1 In cultured 
 races there is self-restraint, the postponing of marriage, and celibacy. 
 The increased age of marriage diminishes the number of offspring. 
 Celibacy of women also increases P. C, in the form of the affec- 
 tion of maiden-aunts and grown-up sisters. In civilized communities 
 young folks spend about sixteen or seventeen years under the 
 parents' roof. (The wonderful activity in the systematic education 
 of both sexes, together with increasing leisure through labor-saving 
 machinery, will extend the preparatory period of youth, which with 
 increasing intelligence and diminishing number of offspring will 
 prolong the period of P. C.) Want of P. C. eliminates the inferior 
 elements of each race as it does the lower races. "Thus the law 
 that progress lies with less offspring and greater parental care ob- 
 tains to the very highest domain of the animal kingdom and works 
 a beneficent change in the constitution of society." 2 The moral 
 class would supplant the immoral at a much more rapid rate than 
 above. "The progress of society depends less upon education and 
 the transmission of acquired characteristics than on a steady progress 
 of elimination of inferior strains." 3 Want of maternal love will 
 work its own disappearance and the unnatural strain will die out 
 before the natural. "In the highest races of men as in the lowest 
 species of fish, a little parental love and devotion is of more efficacy 
 than a great fertility. Parental sympathy has steadily developed 
 because it has always been a notable element in securing the sur- 
 vival of a species or of a superior strain within a species. 4 In- 
 creasing intelligence always implies a more prolonged period of 
 immaturity and this demands an increasing parental sympathy." 
 Parental Sympathy is the basis for all other sympathy and sympathy 
 in general is the ultimate basis of all moral feeling. 
 
 A second form of sympathy, doubling efficiency, is that of the 
 mated pair, or conjugal sympathy. Sweetness and graciousness of 
 
 1 Sutherland, O. & D. of M. I., p. 145. 
 
 2 Ibid, p. 154. 
 
 3 Ibid, p. 155. 
 
 4 Ibid, p. 156. 
 
34 
 
 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 disposition are deceptive elements in the securing of mates. The 
 tendency is to breed by preference from the more sympathetic. 
 Courtship depends largely on capacity for sympathy. The winning 
 in manner are the first and best married. "At all times the gentle 
 and loving disposition has been most readily and most permanently 
 married." * In the lower scale of animals there is very little indi- 
 cation of conjugal sympathy. There is no instance among cold- 
 blooded animals, and in even warm-blooded the progress is slow, 
 birds showing more than the average mammal. There is no sort 
 of sympathy between monotremes. It is equally small in lower 
 marsupials where the female is devoted, but where there is no con- 
 jugal happiness. Phalangers, always seen in pairs, are affectionate; 
 the Sirenia are sociable, also cetacea; but of true C. S. there is no 
 evidence in the lower mammalia. Hedgehogs are permanently united 
 in pairs and are very affectionate. Bats are gregarious, but there 
 is no C. S. and the sexes are segregated. Among rodents, there 
 is some C. S. and family life. There is very little improvement 
 among the carnivora. In every species the male must court and 
 coax and not compel the female. In the main, the birds are char- 
 acterized by a C. S. that has no doubt been an element in securing 
 for them their world-wide profusion. The lowest of the birds, as 
 of the ostrich order, are quite on a level with any of the preceding 
 mammalia. Swans pair for life and there is mutual tenderness and 
 fidelity. Of wading birds, out of 223 genera, 67 mate for life, 
 among them the plover, ibis, spoonbill, stork, screamer and jucana, 
 in unfading tenderness. From pigeons upwards, conjugal affection 
 among birds is striking, particularly the devotion of doves, whose 
 loving attention to the male is continued all the year round and, in 
 a large proportion of cases, unions are broken only by the death 
 of one. The great majority of higher birds are monogamous and 
 their unions are life-long. In many hundreds of species repeated 
 instances are recorded where "each bird is nursed and fed by its 
 mate and its death is followed by disconsolate mourning, often by 
 the steady decline and decease of the bereaved partner." 2 Grosbeaks 
 are self-sacrificing in the highest degree. Even birds of prey seem 
 to pair for life. In mammals, only the highest species show any 
 of this nobler conjugal attachment. Most of the monkey class are 
 
 1 O. and D. of M. I., p. 160. 
 2 Ibid, p. 168. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 35 
 
 polygamous, though "some of the Indian and American monkeys 
 are strictly monogamous." ' The sexes are sympathetic, apart from 
 sexual passion, and there are "many records of cases in which mon- 
 keys have died of grief after the loss of their well-beloved spouse." 2 
 In the anthropoid apes, the father takes still more prominent part 
 in the care of offspring and the tendency to monogamy is un- 
 doubted. 
 
 In the lower ranks of savage life there is a certain degree of 
 improvement, male and female spending their lives together; and 
 the unions in the main are monogamous, with a permanent father 
 and mother united by loving care of offspring. In lowest savage 
 life there is not the remotest vestige of chastity. The young in- 
 dulge in promiscuous intercourse, a special pair finally gravitating 
 to each other. The conjugal condition of lower savages is in ad- 
 vance of that of the apes, but quite comparable. Yet monogamy 
 prevails, and "There grows the natural propensity to happiness of 
 family life." Among the higher savages there is something like 
 customary law. "The natural tendency of the human race is to 
 drift into monogamous unions." 3 The first faint dawning of chas- 
 tity is in the middle grade of savage life, the change being due to 
 C. S., though having required long ages for its development. The 
 chaste woman leaves behind her far more offspring than the un- 
 chaste. There is a growing sense of possession in man, particu- 
 larly with the establishment of marriage which is (lst) by purchase 
 or (2nd) by capture, which makes for chastity, as the man will tol- 
 erate no promiscuity in the wife whom he has bought or acquired. 
 Purchase increases the stability of unions, and the selfish interests 
 of fathers and husbands secure chastity. The chastity of men is 
 a later ideal depending wholly upon sympathy. 
 
 The family is the birthplace of all moral relations. 4 The 
 fundamental sympathies towards child and wife spread out to 
 brothers, sisters, blood-relations, and neighbors — into a general 
 social sympathy — whenever and wherever an advantage 5 is likely 
 to arise therefrom. The life of the species is furthered by gregari- 
 ousness. There are three conditions in the development of the social 
 sympathies, — mere agglomeration, selfish co-operation and sympa- 
 
 1 Darwin, D. of M.. p. 590. Quoted by Sutherland, p. 172. 
 
 2 Sutherland, p. 172. 
 
 3 Ibid, p. 185. 
 
 4 Cf. Green, Proleg.. p. 257. See below, Chap. VI., p. 59. 
 
 5 Fundamentally utilitarian also. 
 
36 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 thetic union. Besides mere "physical assemblage," 1 hunger, fear and 
 sex-appetite are bonds of union. There are singular social customs 
 in ants and bees, so that an ant-hill or bee-hive are no mere agglomer- 
 ations. The sympathy in ants, though exaggerated, is considerable, 
 but it is different from that in warm-blooded animals. There is no 
 sympathy in fishes. Development keeps pace with vocal powers, 
 there being some relation of causation. The voice is used for sexual 
 attraction. Anseres are social, terns give assistance to wounded, 
 flamingoes post sentinels, and there is united defence among many 
 species. In the higher birds there are active sentiments of good- 
 will and actual capacity for self-sacrifice. There is cordial union 
 among beavers. The elephant is sympathetic, the dog highly so. 
 Sympathy is at its highest natural level in monkeys and apes. 
 There is fellow-love in monkeys and their richness of vocabulary 
 is next to man. The baboon is most richly endowed and the gorilla 
 and chimpanzee head the whole mammals except man. In the low- 
 est savages there is an advance over the highest social life of ani- 
 mals. "Mankind can never have lived a mere struggling crowd each 
 for himself. Society is always made up of families bound together 
 by kindly ties. Their habits, judged by our notions, are hard and 
 coarse, yet the family tie of sympathy and common interests are 
 the foundation of moral duty already laid in the mother's patient 
 tenderness, the father's desperate valor in defence of home, their 
 daily care for the little ones, the affection of brothers and sisters, and 
 the mutual forbearance, hopefulness and trust of all." 2 
 
 Social sympathy in mankind arises in the family. Love of 
 own child predisposes to tenderness toward children in general, and 
 indeed to a certain compassionateness to the young of all animals. 
 C. S. also spreads out to regard for woman. The course of history 
 becomes the emergence of the social. Strong social sympathies be- 
 come the most profitable means of progress, as, for instance, Greece 
 under Alexander and in Rome. There is increasing size of social 
 unions. This assists^ in the conversion from wanderers to settled 
 population. Great cities like London, Paris, New York are triumphs 
 of social sympathies. Sympathy must deepen before it can widen. 
 The growth of sympathy is shown in benevolence, in alms-giving, 
 in the building of hospitals, in the poor-law system, in humaner 
 
 1 Buffon, quoted by S., p. 293. 
 
 2 Tylor, Anthropology, p. 402. Quoted by S., p. 352. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 37 
 
 treatment of the insane. The nineteenth century particularly wit- 
 nessed a huge growth in sympathy, shown by the lessening ferocity 
 of warfare and the increasing growth of the peace sentiment. 
 
 Sympathy is a natural morality, "not a complete morality, but 
 a very serviceable, home-spun article, extremely good of its kind." * 
 There are three higher stages, the morality of duty, the morality of 
 self-respect, and the "morality that springs from an ideal of the 
 beauty of goodness." Of all these sympathy is the natural basis. 
 Sympathy or love is morality. Each of the virtues necessary to 
 right conduct is directly or indirectly founded on sympathy. 
 
 The morality of sympathy alone is an "inconstant regulator." 
 The sympathy of a race finds expression in maxims or in laws when 
 public opinion enforces that conduct which is accordant with the 
 average sympathy, giving rise to the sense of duty, which is what 
 the average sympathy of the race demands. Its absolute uncondi- 
 tional character is due to the sanction of ordinances existing from 
 earliest time. 2 The sanctions which give to any duty its impressive- 
 ness arise from (1) public opinion, (2) imitation, (3) authority, and 
 (4) habit. If deference to authority be not sympathetic, it gives 
 rise only to a prudent self-concern, a quasi-moral ity, useful to 
 society, but not in any way akin to the moral idea. Only when 
 sympathetic does a feeling of reverence for authority produce a 
 true morality. Public opinion, operating from a period of infancy 
 unremembered by us, is the real basis of duty. The true moral 
 duty, based on permanent sympathies, gathers force as the genera- 
 tions pass. Morality is not yet complete. It assumes a very noble 
 aspect when, to sympathy and a cheerful compliance with duty 
 whose sanction is external, there is added a complete surrender to 
 that sense of self-respect which is only duty with an internal emo- 
 tion. When the stage is reached wherein an idea of loveliness has 
 gathered around the appearance of kindness, purity and truth, 
 morality has assumed the highest aspect. There are two ideals of 
 virtue, — the manly, courageous one and the soft, tender, womanly 
 one. Practical morality rules the everyday affairs of life. The 
 quasi-moral is of equal utility with the true. Its basis is in respon- 
 sibility, which ripens into law. Necessitarianism is the outcome of 
 
 1 Preliminary Outline, Vol. I., p. 11. 
 
 2 However, only "within the individual"; far better in Spencer, who makes 
 the moral intuitions organized in the race. Cf. supra, Chap. II, p. 14. 
 
38 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 scientific research, and in no case do we need to suppose the indi- 
 vidual a free agent. "The idea of responsibility in no way implies 
 the possession of free-will, but only a mind sane enough to foresee 
 consequences and a knowledge that the individual will reap the 
 fruit of his action, among these the diminished or increased good- 
 will of his fellows." x Responsibility is "perihestic," i. e., within 
 the family and "aphestic," i. e., outside the family, giving rise to 
 public law. Law never gave rise to moral feeling, but moral feeling 
 gave rise to law. 
 
 Sympathy is only a general term we give to that subtle sus- 
 ceptibility of nerve which renders an individual ready to catch the 
 contagion of the emotions of another individual. 2 
 
 Moral instinct does not teach a man what is right and wrong. 
 Moral instincts are founded on sympathy and serve to check and 
 limit the play of selfish instincts in the interests of the preservation 
 of the community or of the species. Right conduct is a reasonable 
 compromise between the selfish and the moral. But as an absolute 
 and universal fact there is neither right nor wrong. 
 
 To this account of Sutherland of the nature and origin of the 
 moral instinct we may add the ideas of Kropotkin. 
 
 With Kropotkin, 3 too, "love, sympathy and self-sacrifice," play 
 "an immense part" in the evolution of the moral sentiment, but "it 
 is not love and not even sympathy upon which society is based," 
 according to him, but upon "the conscience — be it only at the stage 
 of an instinct — of human solidarity" 4 It is from a recognition of 
 the benefit of mutual aid and the increase of happiness of each by 
 each and particularly the sense of justice or equity 5 that the higher 
 moral feelings are developed. 
 
 Kropotkin doubts the reality of the fearful competition for 
 food and life within the same species. In his travels and studies he 
 says he saw rather Mutual Aid and Mutual Support as the factors 
 of the greatest consequence in the preservation of life and further 
 evolution of the species. The scarcity of food in impoverished dis- 
 tricts and the poor health of the animals made it absolutely im- 
 possible that any progressive evolution could be based on keen com- 
 
 1 Preliminary Outline, Vol. I., p. 14. 
 
 2 Ibid, p. 18. 
 
 3 Mutual Aid (1904). 
 
 4 Ibid, Introd., p. 13. 
 
 5 Regarded by Spencer as a form of sympathy. See supra, Chap. II, p. 24. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 3g 
 
 petition. He refuses to admit, and holds that it is not proven, that 
 struggle between individuals of the same species is a "law of nature." 
 He considers Kessler's 1 law of mutual aid far more important than 
 mutual contests. Darwin himself recognized mutual aid as a prime 
 factor in evolution. 2 He differs from Kessler as to parental feel- 
 ing being the source of mutual inclinations in animals, seeming in- 
 clined to attribute it to "sociability proper." However, the main thing 
 is to establish the importance of mutual aids, the origin of which 
 may be left to further research. Basing human ethics on love and 
 personal sympathy, as in Sutherland, he thinks has only contributed 
 to narrow the comprehension of the moral feeling as a whole. 3 A far 
 wider feeling or instinct he considers human solidarity and socia- 
 bility, the beginning of which is seen in the herding of animals. The 
 "fittest" are not the physically strongest nor the cunningest, but those 
 who learn to combine so as mutually to support each other. The 
 most sympathetic members would flourish best and rear the greatest 
 number of offspring. Sociability is as much a law of nature as 
 mutual struggle. The "fittest" are the most social, who have more 
 chances to survive, and to attain the highest development of intelli- 
 gence and bodily organization. Mutual aid thus becomes a factor 
 in evolution of the highest importance, even surpassing mutual 
 struggle. 4 Kropotkin traces the growth of mutual aid in animals 
 and mankind, showing how association and mutual helpfulness are 
 the rule with mammals, reaching their fullest development in the 
 higher vertebrates, becoming conscious and reasoned in man. Socia- 
 bility is of the greatest advantage in the struggle for life and favors 
 the growth of intelligence. He does not consider competition, but 
 co-operation, as a cause of evolution ; and traces its influence among 
 savages and barbarians, in the mediaeval cities with their trade-guilds 
 and craft-guilds, in institutions of the present time such as the village 
 communities in Russia, in labor-unions, and in countless societies for 
 combined action for all possible purposes. "In the practice of 
 mutual aid which we can retrace to the earliest beginnings of evolu- 
 tion, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical 
 conceptions." 5 
 
 1 Russian Naturalist, d. 1881. 
 
 2 Descent of Man, p. 63 ff. 
 
 3 M. A., Introd., p. 12. 
 
 4 Ibid, p. 8. 
 
 5 Ibid, p. 300. 
 
4 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 IDEALISM— IMMANUEL KANT. 
 
 Having examined the evolutionary ethics, we turn now to 
 Idealism. 
 
 Idealism is that view of life which has for its philosophic foun- 
 dation the reduction of all things to ideas in consciousness. According 
 to Idealism, nothing can be known except as affecting our conscious- 
 ness, as ideas of the mind, as appearing to a conscious subject or 
 Ego to which things are presented as objects, as phenomena of con- 
 sciousness, in contradistinction to noumena which are the realities 
 underlying phenomena, but which can never be known in themselves, 
 as Dinge-an-sich, but only as appearing to a conscious subject. 
 
 Idealism is as old as Plato, but was first made prominent in 
 modern thought by Bishop Berkeley, who may rightly be regarded 
 as the one through whom in more recent times it obtained its posi- 
 tion of importance, influencing also, in particular, (though he never 
 admitted the connection of his thought with that of the Irish Bishop) 
 the great Kant, the foremost expositor and classic figure of what 
 is known today, — highly developed and mightily influential, — as the 
 system of Idealism. 
 
 In his critical exposition of the philosophy of Kant, Caird l 
 remarks, "We have in Kant's ethical works, the final and most ex- 
 plicit expression of a view of the moral life which, in some form 
 or other, has held the balance with Hedonism through the whole 
 history of ethical philosophy." Caird instances the Stoics and the 
 Epicureans, and the "endless battle" between the Nominalists and 
 the Realists. 
 
 It is as expressive of this contrast with the evolutionary phil- 
 osophy, this "vital opposition," that we shall consider the ethics 
 of Kant as typical of idealism as Spencer's were of evolutionism; 
 particularly as in his case, also, his leading ideas and fundamental 
 principles form the basis of the ethical, as of the metaphysical, 
 labors of his successors. 
 
 Kant's ethical system may be found in the (l) "Grudlegung 
 zur Metaphysik der Sitten," (1785); (2) "Kritik der Praktischen 
 Vernunft" (1788) ; and in (3) "Die Metaphysik der Sitten" (1797). 
 "Die Kritik der Urtheilskraft" also contains some ethical matter. 
 1 Vol. II., p. 172. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 4I 
 
 Our chief concern, according to Kant, is with what we should 
 be and do, not with what we can know. x The chief questions are 
 practical questions. Kant resorts to ethics as a means of deliverance 
 from his speculative scepticism. Ethics as the means of giving 
 authority to truth of every kind is the corner-stone of all knowledge 
 and the test of all faith. It is a highly curious fact that as it was 
 an ethical interest that led Spencer to philosophy so it was a specu- 
 lative difficulty that prompted Kant's system of ethics. 
 
 "In order that an action should be morally good it is not enough 
 that it should conform to the moral law but it should be done for 
 the sake of the law." 2 A good will alone is good ; and a good 
 will is good, not for what it effects, but for what it intends, even 
 when it fails to accomplish its purpose. 3 The essential thing in 
 the moral worth of actions is that the moral law alone, independent 
 of every other consideration, should directly determine the will. 4 
 Kant appeals to the universal consciousness of man to decide whether 
 it does not recognize the moral law as altogether a priori. 5 Con- 
 sciousness attests that as far as the relations of time and the senses 
 are concerned we are under the law of necessity ; but so far as we 
 are conscious of ourselves as noumena or things in themselves we 
 are certain that we are free. 6 The essence of a man is his charac- 
 ter, — that permanent something to which he imputes his several 
 acts. 7 
 
 The moral law is to be obeyed as law and not to be sought as 
 good. 8 Virtue, however, is worthy of happiness. It is one and the 
 same reason which, whether in a theoretical or practical point of view, 
 judges according to a priori principles. 9 The existence of God is 
 implied in the realization of the summum bonum by the sole agency 
 which is conceivable as adequate to its achievement — that of the Su- 
 preme. 10 "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing 
 admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on 
 them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within." 11 
 
 1 Porter, Kant. p. 23. 
 
 2 Preface to Metaphysic of Morals, Abbot's Translation, p. 4. 
 
 3 Metaphysic of Morals, p. 10. 
 
 4 Critique of Practical Reason, Chap. III., Abbot, p. 164. 
 
 5 Ibid, p. 185. 
 
 6 Ibid, p. 188. 
 
 7 Ibid, p. 191. 
 
 8 Ibid. p. 204. 
 
 9 Ibid, p. 217. 
 
 10 Ibid, p. 222. 
 
 11 Ibid, p. 260. 
 
4 2 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 According to Kant reason is self-determined. The essence of 
 morality lies in the abstraction from all particulars. Nothing in 
 the world, or even without it, can even be conceived as good without 
 qualification, i. e., as absolutely good, except a good will. 1 Gifts 
 of fortune or of nature, such as health, wealth, intellect, judgment, 
 etc., are not good in themselves. We can conceive them, as they 
 often are, perverted to the basest purposes. At the very best, they 
 are but as the setting that holds, and perhaps displays to better ad- 
 vantage, the gem; but the gem would be a gem independently of 
 them, because of its own intrinsic worth. And the only thing that 
 has moral worth is a good will, and no act has moral value that is 
 done from any other motive than that of the right. Duty must be 
 for duty's sake. There must not be the least admixture of advant- 
 age or pleasure or any material consideration or sensuous element in 
 it. It cannot proceed from an affection of the sensibility. It must be 
 solely self-determined by reason. A kind act done by a person na- 
 urally amiable has less moral worth than that of a person of colder 
 temperament who acts solely out of respect for the law. 2 
 
 It is this that gives Kant's ethics their ascetic character, in their 
 severe austerity, their renunciation of every element of pleasure. 
 Every act must proceed purely out of reverence for the moral law. In 
 the antagonism between duty and inclination lies the essence of the 
 moral law. 
 
 This law is stated as follows, in what Kant calls the categorical 
 imperative? as distinguished from the hypothetical imperative which 
 is dependent upon some condition of happiness: — "So act as to be 
 perfectly willing that the maxim (subjective principle) of your act 
 become a law of the universe." 4 The test of an action is its univer- 
 sality. Kant proceeds immediately to apply this to such actions as 
 stealing, lying, suicide, etc. These are wrong because they cannot be 
 universally applied without defeating themselves; they would do 
 away with property, with the making of promises, etc., and are 
 therefore inconsistent with themselves; and it is on these grounds 
 that Kant rejects them as immoral — though it is just here that Kant 
 comes in for the greatest criticism on the part of Hegel, Schopen- 
 
 1 Met. of Morals, t runs., p. 9. 
 
 2 Ibid, p. 14. 
 
 3 Ibid, p. 31. 
 
 4 Ibid, p. 39. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS 
 
 43 
 
 hauer, Bradley, Caird ■ and others. The fact that an act is to be 
 consistent with itself, it is shown, does not give it any moral content. 
 Kant's method is mere formalism. Out of the abstract idea of law, 
 i. e., out of the idea of self-consistency, no particular rules or laws of 
 action can be developed. The abstract universal is barren; it does 
 not differentiate itself. In the sphere of practice no less than in 
 the sphere of theory, the formal laws of identity and contradiction 
 are merely negative criteria of truth. The bare idea of universality, 
 in which we abstract from all particulars, cannot help us to reach 
 any particular moral determination, to the exclusion of all others. 
 Hegel maintains that reason, guided by the formal principle of uni- 
 versality, can as little select, as it can suggest, the particular rules 
 of action. If we abstract from everything but itself, we can univer- 
 salize any particular rule without contradiction. Kant's demonstra- 
 tion, for example, is self-contradictory, begs the question. It presup- 
 poses that right of property which, at the same time, it denies. Every 
 rule thus universalized would result in a contradiction. (Bradley 
 finely shows that the essence of morality is a similar contradiction. 
 "Negate the sensuous self." But if the sensuous self is negated, the 
 possibility of morality disappears. Morality, on Kant's principle, is 
 thus as inconsistent as theft. "Succor the poor" both negates and 
 presupposes poverty. If you are to love your enemies, you must 
 never be without them : and yet you try to get rid of them. Is that 
 consistent? In short, every duty which presupposes something to 
 be negated, is no duty: it is an immoral rule, because self-contra- 
 dictory.) 2 Kant's way of connecting the principle with the par- 
 ticular rules of morality seems to involve that each such rule should 
 be treated as in itself universal, absolute. But in morality there can 
 only be one absolute. Treated as universal, two such commands as 
 "thou shalt not steal" and "thou shalt not kill" must ultimately come 
 into collision with each other, for if all other interests are to be post- 
 poned to the maintenance of the rights of property it is impossible 
 that all other interests should be postponed to the preservation of 
 human life. To make either property or life as absolute end is to 
 raise a particular into a universal. The true moral vindication of 
 each particular can be found only in determining its place in relation 
 to the others, in a complete system of morality. The different inter- 
 
 1 Vol. II., Chap. II. 
 
 2 Bradley, Ethical Studies, p. 140. 
 
44 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 ests must alternately give place to each other, becoming in turn 
 means and end, in the one moral life which manifests itself 
 in them all. 
 
 Kant's pure law of reason becomes an abstract universal, i. e., 
 a universal opposed to any and every particular. But it is only its 
 relation to the particular that gives to the universal any meaning. 
 The attempt to find a content for it within itself ends in depriving 
 it of all content. Kant forgets that a negative implies a positive, 
 and a negative treated merely as a negative is no relation at all, is 
 nothing. 
 
 The progress of the moral consciousness is the transformation 
 of that matter which in its earliest stage it receives into itself, its 
 negation and its reconstitution. Man as a "natural spirit" is in con- 
 tradiction with himself. The waking of self-consciousness is the dis- 
 tinction of himself from his own natural individuality, and carries 
 with it the consciousness of a good or end in which not only the de- 
 sires, but the self, shall be satisfied ; i. e., the satisfaction of the desires 
 is brought under the form of a satisfaction of self. Kant neglects 
 this in his extreme opposition of the self as active -to that self as 
 determined by particular desires. The ideal, the consciousness of 
 which arises out of this opposition, cannot be absolutely alien to the 
 desires, any more than the knowing self can be alien to the particular 
 objects which exist only for it. In fact, the relation in which these 
 desires are brought to the unity of the Conscious Self in its being 
 opposed to them, is already the first step in the way of making ex- 
 plicit the ideal involved in them; and thus the antagonism of desire 
 and duty can only be understood in relation to a unity which is pre- 
 supposed in that antagonism, and which is realizing itself through it. 
 The opposition represents the transition. 
 
 Kant is obliged to bring in utilitarian l considerations in apply- 
 ing his principle of universal law. He does not succeed in leaving 
 out the consideration of human happiness altogether. "Both in form, 
 and by every one of the examples employed in illustration, the tests 
 of right conduct and the law of duty are found by Kant in the effects 
 of conduct, or in the tendencies of conduct to affect human well-being, 
 and that the euphemistic phrases of the fitness of a rule to become a 
 
 1 Cfc Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 6. "A plump descent into selfish utilitarian- 
 ism," Porter, p. 78; p. 76. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 universal law can signify nothing less than the tendencies of conduct 
 with respect to individual and social welfare" l 
 
 "Kant reasons well," says Porter, 2 "when he reasons that cer- 
 tain sensibilities, such as might be supposed peculiar to human beings, 
 are in no sense essential to moral responsibility, e. g., some of the 
 human appetites or tastes, such as are dependent on the body or the 
 special physiological constitution of the human race. But Kant 
 reasons incorrectly when he excludes as accidents of humanity and 
 as non-essential to the discernment and enforcement of the moral law, 
 every species of sensibility whatever as the possible subject of ra- 
 tional discrimination and moral relationship." The satisfaction of 
 desire through the satisfaction of self changes its character. 
 
 Rational being determines itself by its own nature, therefore 
 makes its own being its end. Kant's teaching is here more concrete. 
 The imperative of practical reason is, "Always treat humanity, in 
 your own person and in the person of others, as an end, never as a 
 means." 3 Each, moreover, should seek so far as in him lies, to fur- 
 ther the ends of the other : for the ends of a conscious subject must, 
 as far as possible, become my ends. Here Kant passes from the 
 abstract universal to the universal as realized in the individual. This 
 leads to the conception of a kingdom of ends, which is a social com- 
 munity of beings each of whom is reciprocally end and means to the 
 other. "Act in conformity with the idea that the will of every ra- 
 tional being is a universally legislative will." 4 The kingdom of 
 ends involves the idea of the organic unity of rational beings, but the 
 idea is not fully worked out in Kant. 
 
 According to Kant, human society can never be known as organic 
 though the idea of it as an organism underlies all ethical life. The 
 kingdom of ends is possible as a moral principle, or "typos," which 
 commands us to do our part in realizing it ; but we can never expect 
 to find it realized in experience. However, the "ought-to-be" will 
 spring out of a deeper appreciation of that which "is." 
 
 The opposition between inclination and duty in which, according 
 to Kant, the very essence of morality lies, must be made consistent 
 
 1 Porter, p. 76. Also p. 149; p. 127; p. 125; p. 78 ff. Cf "Virtue as worthy 
 of happiness." Critique of Prac. R., trans., p. 216 ff; p. 157. 
 
 2 Porter, p. 82. 
 
 3 Met. of Morals, trans., p. 47. 
 
 4 C. of Pr. Reason, trans., p. 119. 
 
4 6 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 with the doctrine that all our desires are desire for the good, i. e., 
 an object adequate to the self. 
 
 It has been said of Kant's "Will," that it is "a will that wills 
 nothing," 1 that it is merely formal. "To act," says Bradley, 2 "you 
 must will something and something definite. Duty for duty's sake 
 is false and impossible. We know not duty but duties." 
 
 The permanent value of Kant's ethics, and that which consti- 
 tutes their characteristic distinctiveness, is the emphasis which he lays 
 upon the opposition, the essential antagonism, between spirit and 
 nature in the moral life. 3 It is this which gives them their ascetic 
 and even severely austere character. 
 
 1 JacobI, quoted by Caird, Vol. II., p. 216, note. 
 
 2 Kthical Studies, pp. 138-140. 
 
 3 Caird, Vol. II., p. 196. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS 
 
 47 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SUMMARY AND CRITICISM. 
 
 Having studied the essential facts in both evolutionism and 
 idealism, to what conclusion are we driven? What indeed are the 
 distinguishing facts in each system % 
 
 The distinguishing facts in evolutionism are, (lst) that the mor- 
 al sense is looked upon as a product of evolution, as derived; 1 whether 
 through sympathy (Sutherland, Darwin), or sociality (Kropotkin), 
 or sociality plus intelligence (Darwin), or justice (Huxley, 2 Kropot- 
 kin), or striving of social organism for efficiency (Leslie Stephen), or 
 through experiences of utility together with political, social and re- 
 ligious restraints (Spencer, Sutherland) : it is essentially hetero- 
 nomous. 
 
 (2nd) That morality is relative, in the sense that it is regarded 
 as a mere means 3 of race preservation (Sutherland), or "quantity of 
 life" (Spencer), or social welfare (Stephen), or of further evolution 
 (Darwin). 
 
 (3rd) That its end is happiness, proximate or remote, pleasure 
 in some form (Spencer) ; utility, efficiency, "health of the social 
 tissue" (Stephen) ; vitality of the organism, individual or social wel- 
 fare. Its imperative is the hypothetical imperative. 
 
 Its origin is society, its sanction is utility, its criterion is pleasure 
 or fitness to promote the general happness, its authority is law, cus- 
 tom, religion, public opinion, etc. 4 
 
 Idealism, on the contrary, looks upon the moral sense as 
 (lst) underivedy or solely derived from, or inherent in, reason; self- 
 determined, original, sui generis, inexplicable by any account of pure- 
 ly natural processes, above nature 5 and even contrary to nature ; 6 as 
 distinct from intelligence : 7 it is autonomous. 
 
 (2nd.) Morality is absolute, an end in itself, done purely for the 
 sake of the law, without any other motive or intention, the least ad- 
 mixture of which vitiates its character as moral. Its imperative is 
 the categorical imperative. 
 
 1 Fiske, O. of C. E., Vol. II., P- 327. 
 
 2 Evolution and Ethics, "justice of the pack, P • ^ m 
 
 3 Schurman I of D.. p. 125. Martineau, T. of E. T., Vol. II., p. <>04 
 
 4 ritimSJlv with Spencer the "intrinsic effects" of actions. Cf. supra, Chap. 
 II., p. 17. 
 
 5 Martineau. 
 
 6 Huxley. - 
 
 7 Schurman, I. of D., p. 147 ff. 
 
4 8 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 (3rd.) So far from happiness or any form of pleasure being the 
 end, the essence of the moral consists in its antagonism to inclination. 
 It is not utility or efficiency, for a good will is good not for what 
 it effects but for what it intends, even when it fails to accomplish 
 its purposes. 1 
 
 Its origin is reason, its criterion is its universality, its motive is 
 reverence for the law, its authority is the rational self-legislating will. 
 
 Evolutionary theories of the origin of morality do not seem to 
 account adequately for the facts they attempt to describe. That 
 which constitutes the very essence of the moral, the unique character 
 of the sense of duty, the "oughtness of the ought," is left unexplained 
 on all purely naturalistic theories however ingenious. Sutherland, for 
 instance, makes morality synonymous with sympathy, — but morality, 
 as generally understood, is a wholly different and far wider 2 thing 
 than sympathy; nor does sympathy even constitute the characteristic 
 feature of morality. According to Kant they are diametrically op- 
 posed. Sutherland's identification of morality with sympathy is a 
 view against which Kant's conception of duty and the essential 
 nature of morality would be fundamentally opposed. With Kant 
 actions done out of love possess no moral worth whatever, even 
 though virtuous in themselves. The following words seem par- 
 ticularly applicable to Sutherland. "It is a very beautiful thing to 
 do good to men from love to them and from sympathetic good-will 
 or to be just from love of order : but this is not the true moral maxim 
 of conduct which is suitable to our condition among rational beings, 
 as men, when we pretend with fanciful pride to set ourselves above 
 the thought of duty, like volunteers ; and, as if we were independent 
 of the commands, to want to do of our own pleasure what we think 
 
 we need no command to do." 3 "Duty and obligation are the 
 
 only names that we must give to our relations to the moral law." 4 
 Far from morality being synonymous with sympathy, "It is practical 
 love and not pathological, a love which is seated in the will and not 
 in the propensions of sense : in principles of action and not of tender 
 sympathy; and it is this love only which can be commanded." 5 
 
 As Mackintosh very pertinently remarks, "It is easy to show 
 that morality is an outgrowth of sympathy if you define what is 
 
 1 Kant, M. of M., trans., p. 10. 
 
 2 Kropotkin, p. 12. Cf. supra, Chap. III., p. 39. 
 
 3 Critique of Pr. R., trans., p. 175. 
 
 4 Ibid. 
 
 5 Ibid, p. 178. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS 
 
 49 
 
 'moral' as equivalent to what is sympathetic." 1 You merely get out 
 what you put in: and this criticism may be applied to all evolu- 
 tionary accounts of the origin of the moral sense; they virtually 
 presuppose what they endeavor to explain ; under the name of "sym- 
 pathetic" or "social" or "intelligent" they slip in the moral element 
 and then pretend, or even deceive themselves in believing, that they 
 have deduced it independently, by simply allowing ages for its 
 evolution. But in every case, it is the moral with which they start. 
 Writers like Westermarck and Hobhouse trace the evolution of 
 ethical ideas, but merely as they find them already existing in society : 
 and those who endeavor to go back of them and account for the 
 moral instinct itself as due to sociability in animals combined with 
 the growth of intelligence, or to a variation due to natural selection 
 (which in this case would be nothing short of marvelous itself, and 
 itself in greatest need of explanation) set themselves the impossible 
 task of deriving the moral from the unmoral. By no such con- 
 jurer's trick, by no such mixing, however skillful, of the ingredients 
 of "intelligence," "sympathy," "social instincts," "justice of the 
 pack," etc., in any witches' cauldron of evolutionism can you pro- 
 duce the phenomenon which we term the moral consciousness in man, 
 with its sense of duty, its feeling of obligation, its authoritativeness 
 of conscience, the special and unique character of which none of 
 these theories succeed adequately in describing, let alone satisfac- 
 torily accounting for. The "rules" set up by social opinion are not 
 really moral at all, but merely instructions how to reach the end 
 happiness. They have no more ethical authority, says Martineau, 
 than the receipts of a cook-book! 2 
 
 Moreover, as Huxley has so well remarked, if the moral senti- 
 ments have been derived, "the immoral sentiments have been no less 
 evolved," and there is as much justification, i. e., "natural sanction," 
 for the one as for the other. "Cosmic evolution may teach us how 
 the good and the evil tendencies of man may have come about, but 
 in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what 
 we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before." 
 The good does not derive its sanction from being the result of natural 
 development. On the contrary, the moral seems to be a something 
 in contradiction with the whole course of merely natural develop- 
 ment, over against it, regulating it, mitigating it, and that, too, 
 
 1 Fr. C. to K., p. 180. 
 
 2 T. of E. T., Vol. II, p. 353. 
 
50 
 
 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 not instinctively but consciously, "Social progress means a check- 
 ing of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it 
 of another which may be called the ethical process." l That which 
 restrains nature must surely be above nature, different from it and 
 independent of it. As Green says of the principle of knowledge, 
 "how can that explain nature which is a product of nature" ; 2 and, 
 similarly, how can that which sets itself in opposition to nature and 
 restrains and alters and moulds 3 nature be itself a product of nature ? 
 Furthermore, "To a being who is simply a result of natural forces, 
 an injunction to conform to their laws is unmeaning"; 4 and yet all 
 evolutionists accept the validity of the moral law, and are bound 
 and hold others bound by the same moral laws that govern the con- 
 duct of other men. Why man should obey any moral law 5 whatever 
 its origin, why he should feel himself constrained or restrained, — in 
 which lies the very essence of the "ought," or the sentiment of 
 responsibility and of duty, which is wholly different from any feel- 
 ing of sympathy or affectionateness or any reasoned calculation of 
 justice, — is the very thing to be explained, but which is not satis- 
 factorily accounted for on any purely naturalistic origin of morals. 
 The moral as it appears in man is absolutely differ- 
 ent from anything at all resembling it in even the highest animals. 
 It has never been proved that animals have a conscience, or that 
 there exists in them any moral feeling at all. The chief element 
 in man is his consciousness, and his consciousness of himself as a 
 free being. Animals may be conscious but they are not self-con- 
 scious. 6 In Kant's language, they live in the world of phenomena, 
 not of noumena. They never propose any ends to themselves, pos- 
 sess no idea of motive, are not guided by any conscious conception of 
 the good, but act wholly from feeling, habit and instinct. "We 
 have no evidence of the presence in 'brutes' of such an intelligence 
 as that which forms the basis of our knowledge and if that be 
 absent, there can properly speaking have been no development of our 
 mind from such a mind as theirs;" 1 — much less of our ideas of mor- 
 
 1 Evol. and Eth., p. 80. Cf. Martineau, "Naturalizing ethics rather re- 
 verses the idealising process which rather ethieises nature." (T. of E. T., Vol. 
 II., p. 424). 
 
 2 Proleg., p. 11. 
 
 3 Cf. Alexander, M. O. and P., "whether morality may not throw light on 
 the development of the lower world, as that development on morality," p. 15; 
 also p. 262. 
 
 4 Green, Proleg., p. 9. "Consistent evolutionist must abolish practical or 
 prescriptive part altogether." 
 
 5 See note 4. 
 
 6 Caird, p. 183. 
 
 7 Green, p. 89. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. „ 
 
 ality which, according to the evolutionist view, presuppose mind, con- 
 sciousness being one of the most important factors on which the 
 evolutionist relies for his explanation of the moral from the feelings 
 and instincts of animals. 
 
 Even holding to the naturalistic explanation of the rise of the 
 moral sentiments, it must be remembered that natural processes are 
 not merely natural. Behind the natural processes, behind all bi- 
 ologic change (as will later be shown), 1 stands an Eternal Mind, 
 to which the processes are organic, and which realizes itself through 
 them ; and through which alone they have any meaning, or are even 
 rendered possible, being absolutely dependent upon its free, crea- 
 tive, intelligent and moral activity. "Human action is only ex- 
 plicable by the action of an eternal consciousness, which uses them 
 as its organs and reproduces itself through them." 2 "This conclu- 
 sion can in no wise be affected by any discovery or (legitimately) by 
 any speculation, in regard either to the relation between the human 
 organism and other forms of animal structure, or to the develop- 
 ment of human intelligence and the connection of the lowest stages 
 with the higher stages of the intelligence of brutes. If there is 
 reason for holding that man, in respect of his animal nature, is 
 descended from 'mere' animals — animals in whom the functions of 
 life and sense were not organic to the eternal or distinctively human 
 consciousness — this does not affect our conclusion in regard to the 
 consciousness of which, as he now is, man is the subject; a conclu- 
 sion founded on an analysis of what he now is and does." 3 
 
 Such an analysis reveals man as a free moral agent. "In him- 
 self, i. e., in respect of that principle through which he at once is 
 a self and distinguishes himself as such, he exerts a free activity — 
 an activity which is not in time, not a link in the chain of natural 
 becoming, which has no antecedents other than itself, but is self- 
 originated." 
 
 "That countless generations should have passed away during 
 which a transmitted organism was progressively modified by reaction 
 on its suroundings, by struggle for existence or otherwise, till its 
 functions became such that an eternal consciousness could realize 
 or reproduce itself through them— this might add to the wonder 
 
 1 See below, Chap. VII. 
 
 2 Green, p. 86. 
 
 3 Ibid, p. 87. 
 
52 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 with which the consideration of what we do and are must always fill 
 us, but it could not alter the results of that consideration and can- 
 not affect the analysis of knowledge on which we found the theory 
 of a free or self -conditioned and eternal mind in man." 1 
 
 The lower cannot explain the higher. The lower is itself 
 explicable only in its bearing on and relation to the higher. 2 Con- 
 sciousness can never be explained by anything less than conscious- 
 ness, nor can morality — which according to the evolutionists them- 
 selves is dependent upon consciousness — exist apart from free, 
 rational beings. The evolutionary theories do not bridge the chasm 
 between the moral and the unmoral. "In this case, as in many 
 others, development means transformation." 3 
 
 As for pleasure being the end of action, it is never pleasure as 
 such that the self seeks, but pleasure viewed as a good of the self, 
 pleasure as related to the conscious self in furtherance of the ends of 
 its being. The motive of every imputable act is desire of personal 
 good in some form or other, — which is absolutely different from 
 animal want. In the satisfaction of his desire a man seeks the satis- 
 faction of himself. "That view for which we plead," says Green, 
 "is that the quality of the absolutely desirable life which renders it 
 such in man's thoughts, is that it shall be the full realization of 
 his capacities; that, although pleasure must be incidental to such 
 realization, it is in no way distinctive of it, being equally incidental 
 to any unimpeded activity, to the exercise of merely animal func- 
 tions no less than to those that are properly human: that, although 
 we know not in detail, what the final realization of man's capacities 
 would be, we know well enough, from the evidence they have so 
 far given of themselves, what a fuller development of them would 
 be: that thus, in the injunction to make life as full a realization as 
 possible of human capacities, we have a definiteness of direction 
 which the injunction to make life as pleasant as possible does not 
 supply." 4 
 
 The end of life is not happiness, but self-realization ; even though 
 the latter should involve pain, suffering and sacrifice. "It is not 
 the realizedness of the form that is good, but the realization of it." 5 
 
 1 Green, p. 88. 
 
 2 Ibid, p. 83. "The constituent elements of an organism can only be 
 truly and adequately conceived as rendered what they are by the end realized 
 thro' the organism." 
 
 3 Mackintosh, p. 123. 
 
 4 Green, p. 463 ff. 
 
 5 Bradley, E. S., p. 133. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. „ 
 
 Fullest realization cannot be attained by one man except in so 
 far as it is attained by all. 1 He cannot think of himself as satisfied 
 in any life other than a social life. 2 His highest good is "an ideal 
 of a perfect life for himself and other men, as attainable for him 
 only through them, for them only through him : a life that shall be 
 perfect, in the sense of being the fulfilment of all that the human 
 spirit in him and them has the real capacity or vocation of becoming, 
 and which (as implied in its being such fulfilment) shall rest on 
 the will to be perfect." 3 
 
 1 Cf. Spencer, "No one can be perfectly free, moral or happy till all 
 are so." (Soc. Stat., p. 273. See below, Chap. VI., p. 57. 
 
 2 Green, p. 415. 
 
 3 Ibid, p. 419. Also Soc. Stat., p. 255. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CONVERGENCE. 
 
 "Nothing is more striking at the present time," writes Profes- 
 sor Alexander, 1 "than the convergence of the main opposing ethical 
 theories — on the one hand, the traditional English mode of thought, 
 which advancing through utilitarianism has ended in the so-called 
 evolutionary ethics; on the other, the idealistic movement which is 
 associated with the German philosophy derived from Kant." 
 
 This convergence he finds to be "not of course the mere agree- 
 ment in practical precepts, which are only the data of the science 
 and the common property of every thinker; nor is it found in 
 those ultimate philosophical principles from which ethics can never 
 be kept far removed, for they are as divergent as possible." It is 
 rather an "agreement in spirit, which, though often impalpable, is 
 shown both in general method and in certain general results which, 
 though fundamental for ethics, are what Bacon calls 'media axio- 
 mata' in comparison with the ultimate first principles of phil- 
 osophy." 2 
 
 The agreement in method is described as "consisting in an 
 objectivity or impartiality of treatment, which we understand by the 
 'scientific' habit of mind and are apt to associate with the study of 
 the natural sciences because natural objects make fewer appeals to 
 the prejudices." 3 This scientific treatment he further defines as 
 "willingness to submit to examination things that might seem to the 
 feelings too valuable to endure the desecration of analysis." 4 
 
 The convergence in general results he finds "harder to define, 
 but some measure of it may be obtained by comparing the ideal- 
 istic doctrine, that morality is a common good realized in individual 
 wills, with the view held by 'the evolutionist Leslie Stephen,' that 
 conduct is moral according as it contributes to social vitality'' 5 
 
 The result which evolution has reached, "this mutual inter- 
 connection of a man and his society, is not new; it was part of the 
 final outcome given in the first quarter of the (nineteenth) century 
 
 1 m. o. & P., p. 5. 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
 3 Ibid. 
 
 4 Ibid, p. 6. 
 
 5 Ibid. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 to German idealism at the hands of Hegel, who took Kant's ab- 
 stract formula and gave it body and life by treating the law of 
 morality as realized in the institutions of society and the state. It 
 is in this concrete social form that idealism has been transplanted 
 into England." 1 
 
 What Evolutionism and Idealism, then, in spite of their great 
 and fundamental differences, have in common, is their scientific 2 
 and social character. Both are scientific. Both look upon ethics as 
 a science, and hold that the truths of ethics are to be scientifically 
 treated and established. We have seen how this was the aim of Spen- 
 cer's ethical, and even philosophical, labors — to put ethics upon a 
 "scientific basis," to find for the highly important moral laws, the 
 "regulative" principles of society (the loss or even the impairment 
 of which he looked upon as exceedingly "disastrous") a philosophic 
 foundation ; — the "secularization of morals" 3 he called this, and 
 morality thus derived "natural morality" in contradistinction to 
 "supernatural." The dictates of the moral sentiments had to be 
 "interpreted and made definite by science." 4 For the "innate per- 
 ceptions of right" to serve as guides of conduct they must be "duly 
 enlightened and made precise by an analytic intelligence." His 
 ethics are "rational ethics." 5 
 
 In Kant, too, we find explicitly stated the need and desirability 
 of scientific form for the treatment of morality. "Even wisdom," he 
 writes, "which otherwise consists more in conduct than in knowledge 
 yet has need of science not in order to learn from it, but to secure for 
 its precepts admission and permanence." 6 
 
 According to Kant, it was absolutely necessary to set forth 
 moral principles in a scientific form as well as to critically examine 
 and deduce them by a thorough-going philosophical analysis, purely 
 in the light of reason, independent of feeling, or revelation, or 
 popular unwillingness to engage in more than superficial thought, 
 or any other consideration whatever. No less than Spencer he was 
 absolutely convinced of the need, and indeed the indispensableness, 
 of absolutely objective treatment. He even thought that this 
 
 2 Used'here.'not as contrasted with philosophical, but as denoting impar- 
 tiality and objectiveness of treatment of experience, characteristic of botn 
 science and philosophy in narrower sense. 
 
 3 D. of E., preface. See supra, Chap. II., p. 13. 
 
 4 D. of E., Sec. 63. 
 
 5 Ibid, Sec. 105. 
 
 6 M. of M., trans., p. 21. 
 
5 6 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 would greatly promote the observance of moral commands, when they 
 were seen to be not arbitrary or something externally imposed, but 
 to rest on highest considerations of pure abstract reason. 
 
 "Science * (critically undertaken and methodically directed) is 
 the narrow gate that leads to the true doctrine of practical wisdom, 
 if we understand by this not merely what one ought to do, but what 
 ought to serve teachers as a guide to construct well and clearly the 
 road to wisdom which everyone should travel and to secure others 
 from going astray. Philosophy must always continue to be the 
 guardian of this science, and although the public does not take any 
 interest in its subtle investigations, it must in the resulting doctrines 
 which such an examination first puts in a clear light." 2 
 
 In another passage he says, "If there is no genuine supreme 
 principle of morality but what must rest simply on pure reason, 
 independent on all experience, I think it is not necessary even to put 
 the question whether to exhibit these concepts in their generality 
 (in abstracto) as they are established a priori along with the prin- 
 ciples belonging to them, if our knowledge is to be distinguished 
 from the vulgar and to be called philosophical." 3 
 
 Such a rational ethics, as distinguished from merely popular 
 precepts, "a metaphysic of morals" is "not only an indispensable 
 substratum of all sound theoretical knowledge of duties, but is at the 
 same time a desideratum of the highest importance to the actual 
 fulfilment of their precepts." 4 
 
 Another thing which the Evolutionary and the Idealistic sys- 
 tems have in common is their recognition and emphasis of man as 
 related to his fellows, as a member of society. Society, in the view 
 of both is an organism, in which the whole is dependent upon the 
 parts, and the part — the individual — derives his true character only 
 as an expression of, and as related to, the whole. "It is fundamental 
 to the physical view of morals that there can be nothing good which 
 does not contribute to moral stability ;" 5 — to the help or vitality of 
 the "social tissue," as Leslie Stephen calls it. Even morality itself, 
 by most evolutionists, is looked upon but as a means to this end, a 
 
 1 Kant does not, of course, mean natural science. 
 
 2 C. of Pr. R., trans., p. 262. 
 
 3 M. of M., p. 26. 
 
 4 Ibid, p. 27. 
 
 5 M. O. & P., p. 166. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 product of natural selection because of its special fitness to promote 
 the social welfare. In Kant we have the doctrine of the Kingdom 
 of Ends which, as we have seen, is a social community in which 
 each serves as reciprocally means and end to the others. Each being 
 a rational being, is to be treated by every other rational being as 
 such, and his ends are to be respected as well as my ends, and each 
 should seek, so far as in him lies, to further the ends of the others. 
 It is the very fitness of the maxim of an action for a place in a scheme 
 of universal legislation that stamps it as a good action. Spencer re- 
 fers specifically to Kant's dictum, "Act according to the maxim only, 
 which you can wish, at the same time, to become a universal law," 
 and remarks, "This implies the thought of a society in which the 
 maxim is acted upon by all and universal benefit recognized as the 
 effect." 1 Of the evolutionists, Spencer's ethics are the most individ- 
 ualistic, and yet they are marked throughout by a recognition of the 
 claims of, and the duties towards, others. 2 The intimate relation 
 of a man to his fellows and to all other men is everywhere brought 
 out; and Spencer even maintains that "it is only by entire fulfil- 
 ment of the moral law (which includes social obligations) that life 
 can become complete." Individual perfection is dependent upon 
 social perfection. "The co-existence of a perfect man and an im- 
 perfect society is impossible." 3 In his own fine words, "No one can 
 be perfectly free until all are free; no one can be perfectly moral 
 until all are moral ; no one can be perfectly happy until all are 
 happy." 4 The philosophical moralist "treats solely of the straight 
 man, describes how the straight man comports himself; shows in 
 what relationship he stands to other straight men; shows how a 
 community of straight men is constituted." 5 Spencer's ethics are 
 what he calls Absolute Ethics, as distinguished from Relative Ethics, 
 and formulate the laws of "the ideal man as existing in the ideal 
 social state." 9 
 
 Acording to Alexander, morality is social as society is moral. 7 
 The very essence of goodness is "its adjustment to the order of 
 
 1 D. of E., Sec. 108. 
 
 2 Soc. Stat., p. 273. 
 
 3 D. of E., Sec. 108. 
 
 4 Soc. Stat., p. 273. 
 
 5 D. of E., Sec. 106. 
 
 6 Ibid, Sec. 108. 
 
 7 M. O. & P., p. 15. 
 
5 8 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 action, its compatibility with the systematic whole. The moral sen- 
 tence expresses this adjustment." 1 
 
 In Green the social character of morality is brought out still 
 more strongly. The end which a rational being proposes to himself 
 is his highest good, but this cannot be attained apart from his fel- 
 lows in society. 2 The divine idea of man can only be fulfilled in 
 and through persons, i. e., in and through society. Without society 
 there can be no persons, as only through society is personality actual- 
 ized. 3 Life consists in continual and progressive realization on the 
 part of the self, but this self-realization is not only compatible with, 
 but dependent on, the like realization of themselves by others. There 
 is a unity of the human spirit throughout its individual manifesta- 
 tions, in virtue of which the realization of its possibilities, though a 
 personal object to each man, is at the same time an object fully 
 attainable by one only in so far as it is attained by the whole human 
 society"* .... "The spring of all moral progress can still lie 
 nowhere else than in the attraction of heart and will by the ideal 
 of human perfection, and the practical convictions which arise 
 from it." 5 
 
 "Taking human society together, its action in one mode sup- 
 plements its action in another, and the whole sum of its action forms 
 the motive power of true moral development ; which means the appre- 
 hension on our part, ever widening and ever filling and ever more 
 fully responded to in practice, of our possibilities as men and of the 
 reciprocal claims and duties which those possibilities imply." 6 .... 
 "Do what is best for mankind" Green uses as a popular equivalent 
 of Kant's formula — "Treat humanity, whether in your own person 
 or in that of another, never merely as a means, always at the same 
 time as an end." 7 
 
 Thus Evolutionism and Idealism are at one in the stress they 
 lay upon the social character of man's nature and man's duty. 
 
 There is also a basis of approach between the two philosophies 
 in the importance each attaches to the family as the birth-place of 
 moral ideas. According to Sutherland, morality is "perihestic," i. e., 
 
 1 M. o. & P., p. 148. 
 
 2 Prole*?., p. 199. 
 
 3 Ibid, p. 200. 
 
 4 Ibid, p. 422. 
 
 5 Ibid, p. 341. 
 
 6 Ibid, p. 337. 
 
 7 Ibid, p. 342. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 originated around the hearth-fires of primitive man, taking its rise 
 in parental and conjugal love and filial affection, and developing 
 with a tender regard of brother and sister and the mutual and 
 reciprocal offices and kindness of the members of the same family- 
 group. With Green, too, "the form in which true good, or good on 
 the whole, was first conceived was that of family well-being." 1 
 The most primitive and elementary objects that could supply the 
 soul's demand for a permanent good and give some definite content 
 to the idea of true good, .... "must have been those that contribute 
 to supply the wants of a family — to keep its members alive and com- 
 fortably alive." 2 In providing for them he provides for himself. 
 They constitute his other self. His own life is caried forward in 
 theirs. This provision for the wants of a family, which gives its 
 content to the idea of good, is not a merely instinctive process. It is 
 connected with the good will and rests on self-consciousness. It is 
 "in promise and potency an interest in the bettering of mankind." 3 
 It reveals an interest, moral and spiritual, different from the mere 
 satisfaction of animal wants, and leading to the conception of "that 
 permanent welfare of the family, which it was their great object 
 to promote, as consisting, at any rate among qther things, in the 
 continuance in others of an interest like their own; in other words, 
 as consisting in the propagation of virtue." 4 " 
 
 Through the family, then, by identifying one's permanent good 
 with it, and the care and cultivation of its members, there has 
 arisen "a conception of good things of the soul, as having a value 
 distinct from and independent of the good things of the body; if 
 not as the only things truly good, to which all other goodness is 
 merely relative." 5 
 
 1 Proleg., p. 246. 
 
 2 Ibid, p. 247; p. 257. 
 
 3 Ibid, p. 258. 
 
 4 Ibid, p. 260. 
 
 5 Ibid, p. 261. 
 
60 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 RECONCILIATION. 
 
 We referred above 1 to Caird's statement of the "vital opposi- 
 tion which has affected the whole history of Ethics," and which he 
 finds in its most pronounced form in Kant as contrasted with the 
 hedonistic philosophy. This opposition we have endeavored to illus- 
 trate as revealed in the two antagonistic systems of Evolutionism 
 and Idealism. We have attempted to make plain the characteristic 
 distinctiveness of each, and our study has emphasized the funda- 
 mental contrasts between them. Our last chapter was devoted to 
 setting forth some of the points which they nevertheless have in 
 common, such as their scientific and social character, and the import- 
 ance each attaches to the family as the birth-place of moral ideas. 
 
 The author whom we have above quoted, after stating that 
 "each side represents a real interest of the moral life," goes on to 
 remark that "we are taking up the consideration of it at a stage at 
 which the antagonism has reached its ultimate form, and therefore 
 is on the way to be reconciled.'" 2 
 
 Kant himself, "though he expresses the negative view of the 
 moral life in its relation to sense and passion in no hesitating terms, 
 yet has continually present to him the necessity of a reconciliation." 
 
 This reconciliation is found in the higher unity which embraces 
 both interests, and in relation to which alone they are at all to be 
 understood. The ideal, the consciousness of which arises out of the 
 opposition of self as active from that self as determined by particular 
 desires, cannot (as has been shown above) 3 be absolutely alien to 
 the desires, any more than the knowing self can be alien to the 
 particular objects which exist only for it. In fact, the relation 
 in which these desires are brought to the unity of the Conscious Self 
 in its being opposed to them, is already the first step in the way of 
 making explicit the ideal involved in them. The antagonism of 
 desire and duty can only be understood in relation to a unity which 
 is presupposed in that antagonism and which is realizing itself 
 through it. The satisfaction of the desires is brought under the 
 
 1 Chap. IV., p. 40. 
 
 2 Vol. II., p. 172. 
 
 3 Chap. IV., p. 44. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 61 
 
 form of a satisfaction of self. The absolute universal of Kant be- 
 comes the concrete universal of Hegel. The antagonism becomes 
 realization. 
 
 To quote a passage from Bradley, 1 "The universal to be realized 
 is no abstraction, but an organic whole, a system where many spheres 
 are subordinated to one sphere, and particular actions to spheres. This 
 system is real in the detail of its function, not out of them, and lives 
 in its vital processes, not away from them. The organs are always 
 at work for the whole, the whole is at work in the organs. And I 
 am one of the organs. The universal, then, which I am to realize is 
 the system which penetrates and subordinates to itself the particulars 
 of all lives, and here and now in my life has this and that function, 
 in this and that case, in exercising which through my will it realizes 
 itself as a whole, and me in it." 
 
 There is a Good Will in the world realizing itself through 
 human wills, through mankind, through society, through history, 
 through nature ; using all things as its organs, through which it ex- 
 presses itself, and as its instruments, though which it accomplishes 
 its purposes. "The good-will in the world realizes itself by and in 
 imperfect instruments, and in spite of them." 2 
 
 The deepest analysis of the phenomena of life and of human 
 consciousness, and of the process we call knowing, reveals in man the 
 presence of a "principle not natural," 3 a "spiritual" 4 or "divine 5 
 principle" which is a part or a manifestation of an Eternal Con- 
 sciousness 6 or Mind 7 or Spirit realizing itself in the self-conscious- 
 ness of man, in his self-conscious and free activity and effort after 
 continual improvement, mental, material and moral; whose realiza- 
 tion constitutes its own rational, self-conscious end, 8 for which it 
 uses every material, natural and human agency. 9 
 
 This good-will, in constant progress of self-realization, on its 
 scientific side we call Evolution, with whose process we identify it. 
 
 "The slowly wrought-out dominance of Mind in things is the 
 central fact of evolution ;"— so writes Hobhouse, 10 one of the latest 
 
 1 Ethical Studies, p. 159. 
 
 2 Ibid, p. 165. 
 
 3 Green, p. 14. 
 
 4 Ibid, Chap. I. 
 
 5 Ibid, p. 188. 
 
 6 Ibid, p. 72; p. 86. 
 
 7 Ibid, p. 87. 
 
 9 Cf^JcJb S" v. 8, "There is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Al- 
 mighty giveth them understanding." 
 
 10 Morals in Evolution, Vol. II., p. 284. 
 
62 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 writers on the evolution of morals; and this is the conclusion to 
 which he comes after a most careful study of the facts of evolution 
 and their application to the origin and development of morality, 
 treated historically and scientifically. He reaches the idea of "a 
 self-conscious evolution of humanity," and finds therein "a mean- 
 ing and an element of purpose for the historical process which has 
 led up to it." For him the whole "plan" of evolution implies a 
 "planning" Mind. 1 "For progress," he writes, "is not something 
 that goes on of itself by an automatic law, or an inherent tendency 
 
 of things There remains the possibility, however difficult to 
 
 conceive in concrete shape, of a spirit subject to conditions, and 
 achieving its full growth only by mastering them. . . . Progress is 
 made only in so far as the conditions of life come more and more 
 under the dominion of Mind." 2 
 
 As Schurman says, in criticism of Darwin's view that morality 
 is but a product of highly developed intelligence; "Were intelli- 
 gence not at the heart of the cosmos, it could not have turned up as 
 the crowning glory of the development of life." 3 Huxley in his 
 famous Romanes lecture has expressed a similar idea. "Fragile 
 reed as he may be, man, as Pascal says, is a thinking reed ; there lies 
 within him a fund of energy, operating intelligently, and so far akin 
 to that which pervades the universe, that it is competent to influence 
 and modify the cosmic process." 4 
 
 So far from the knowledge of nature being itself a part or pro- 
 duct of nature, there is a sense in which man is related to nature as 
 its author, as well as its child, 5 through the presence in him of a 
 principle not-natural, by which he makes his world of experience 
 through the unifying power of consciousness, (which Kant calls "the 
 synthetic unity of apperception" or "understanding"). "The under- 
 standing makes nature" is Kant's celebrated dictum. 6 Spirit cannot 
 be derived from "nature." Nature, as a "process of change" is ex- 
 plicable only through spirit. 7 Man does not merely, like the plant 
 or animal, undergo a process of development, but seeks to and does 
 
 1 M. in E., Vol. L, p. 4, footnote. 
 
 2 Ibid, Vol. II., p. 280. 
 
 3 I. of D., p. 146. 
 
 4 E. of E., p. 83. 
 
 5 Green, p. 15. 
 
 6 "Macht zwar der Verstand die Natur aber er schafft sie nicht," quoted 
 by Green, p. 15. 
 
 7 Green, p. 37. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 63 
 
 develop himself. 1 "If it were not for certain demands of the spirit 
 which is our self, the notion of human progress could never occur 
 to us." "It is the consciousness of possibilities in ourselves un- 
 realized, but constantly in process of realization, that alone enables 
 us to read the idea of development into what we observe of natural 
 life, and to conceive that there must be such a thing as a plan of the 
 world." 2 The very idea of Evolution and the discerning of a Plan 
 in the process of nature is a spiritual product, a manifestation of 
 Mind or Conscious Intelligence. 
 
 Evolution is but the mental side of what on the active side is 
 self-realization. 
 
 "Evolution," writes Bradley, "gives us over neither to chance 
 nor alien necessity, for it is that self-realization which is the pro- 
 gressive conquest of both." 3 .... "If 'progress' signifies that an 
 advance has been set going and is kept up by chance in an unknown 
 direction: that the higher is, in short, what is and what before was 
 not, and that what will be, of whatever sort it is, will still be a step 
 in progress ; if, in short, the movement of history towards a goal is 
 mere illusion, and the stages of that movement are nothing but the 
 successes of what from time to time somehow happens to be best 
 suited to the chance of circumstances, — then it is clear, in the first 
 place, that teleology being banished, such words as evolution and 
 progress have lost their own meaning, and that to speak of humanity 
 realizing itself in history, and of myself finding in that movement 
 the truth of myself worked out, would be simply to delude oneself 
 with hollow phrases." 4 
 
 In other words, if Evolution is to have any meaning at all, it 
 must have a teleological significance. It cannot be merely blindly 
 mechanical. Only in the light of ideal considerations, as being a 
 process of self-conscious self-realization, is it at all rational or in- 
 telligible. 
 
 After remarking that the word "evolution" may be used to stand 
 for anything whatever, though it has none the less a meaning of its 
 own, Bradley continues, " 'Evolution,' 'development,' 'progress,' all 
 imply something identical throughout, 2. subject of the evolution, 
 
 1 Green, p. 182. 
 
 2 Ibid, p. 196. 
 
 3 Ethical Studies, p. 172. 
 
 4 Ibid, p. 173. 
 
6 4 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 which is one and the same. If what is there at the beginning is not 
 there at the end, and the same as what was there at the beginning, 
 then evolution is a word with no meaning. Something must evolve 
 itself, and that something, which is the end must also be the begin- 
 ning. It must be what moves itself to the end, and must be the end 
 which is the 'because' of the motion. Evolution must evolve itself 
 to itself, progress itself go forward to a goal which is itself, develop- 
 ment bring out nothing but what is in, bring it out, not from external 
 compulsion, but because it is in." 
 
 In other words — we reach the same conclusion — Mind is back of 
 all evolution. The whole evolutionary process, whether in nature 
 or in morals, posits Mind, — a purposive intelligence, a di- 
 recting force. Evolution is not a mere fortuitous process, 
 given over to "accident," or "necessity," — blind chance or 
 meaningless change. It implies, and indeed exhibits, orderly 
 development ; and, moreover, the triumph of such evolutionary think- 
 ers as Spencer, or Darwin, is to have reduced the whole process to law, 
 and to have discovered the formula, or the "mechanism," of develop- 
 ment. That which reveals the omnipresence of law in every particle of 
 material creation, from protoplasm to highest man, cannot itself be 
 without law, in the sense of being lawless, irrational. On the con- 
 trary, it is itself the ground of law, the basis and cause of rational 
 procedure and development. Evolution does not so much explain 
 Soul, as Soul explains evolution. Evolution without soul is inex- 
 plicable and begs the question. Soul supplies the energizing spring 
 of the whole evolutionary process, and is explicable, — self-explicable : 
 the very definition of soul, or at least the knowledge of it, as we are 
 conscious of it in ourselves, implying all those faculties and powers 
 which evolution assumes but does not account for. Evolution viewed 
 from the highest rational standpoint, and on the only theory that will 
 adequately explain all the facts, becomes one with realization; 1 is 
 identical with the self-conscious, self-realization of the Spirit of the 
 universe. 
 
 Applying these considerations to the evolution of morals; — all 
 that evolutionary thinkers such as Darwin, Sutherland, and Spencer 
 have said as to the naturalistic origin of the moral sense may be 
 
 1 "According to Hegel," says Sidgwlck, "the essence of the universe is a 
 process of thought from the abstract to the concrete; and a right understand- 
 ing of this process gives the key for interpreting the evolution in time of 
 European philosophy." — History of Ethics, p. 280. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 6 . 
 
 true, without invalidating the idealistic character of ethics. Even 
 granted that our criticism has not been valid, and that the feeling of 
 moral obligation and the sense of duty may have indeed arisen, as 
 these writers claim, through sympathy and sociality and intelligence, 
 immensely furthered through natural selection, together with later 
 enactment of positive law, and that the whole process may be ex- 
 hibited in unbroken unity from lowest animal to highest man; — in 
 the light of what has been set forth in this chapter it still remains 
 an incontrovertible fact, that evolution at the most merely reveals the 
 historical order of events and does not explain their intrinsic char- 
 acter, due to their derivation from the Ideal Cause, the Ground of 
 the Moral Order and Moral Progress of the universe, which can be 
 nothing else than Eternal Reason, realizing itself progressively in 
 time. 
 
 There is a moral order in the Universe. The cosmos is in- 
 trinsically and originally moral, founded in moral as in natural law, 
 moral in purpose and in essence. 
 
 There is an ideal trend to our nature. There are facts of the 
 moral life and the transcendent character of duty, feelings and aspir- 
 ations and motives and impulses of the soul, moral instincts in short, 
 which no merely evolutionary or utilitarian considerations can ade- 
 quately explain, which defy analysis as mere products of hereditary 
 hedonistic forces. The sense of honor, the feeling of integrity, the 
 moral sensitiveness that "feels a stain like a wound," the heroic ethi- 
 cal loyalty that "sweareth to its own hurt and changeth not;" all 
 that we term the grandeur of righteousness and the beauty of holi- 
 ness : — these things are beyond any mere analysis of ethical feeling to 
 explain, they transcend any and every merely social explanation and 
 justification. They have their sanction in a higher source, viz., in 
 their idealistic and divine origin. Ethics,, by the very nature and 
 character of the ethical, demands a tkeistic, at least an idealistic, 
 interpretation of the universe and of life. 
 
 The Evolutionary account of the origin of ethics is perhaps cor- 
 rect so far as it goes. It may possibly be accepted completely as a 
 description of the historical process in time : but as penetrating to the 
 core of the character of the ethical, as revealing the full worth and 
 grandeur of the mor.al instinct, particularly of the higher forms of 
 duty, it falls short as a complete satisfactory account that shall do 
 full justice to the thing attempted to be explained. The latter 
 
66 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 has its rational and full comprehension only in that Ideal Source 
 whence it springs. 
 
 Kant's lofty words perhaps convey better than any formal state- 
 ment, or mere scientific declaration, the high character and origin of 
 the moral sentiment : — 
 
 "Duty! Thou sublime and mighty name, that dost embrace 
 nothing charming or insinuating, but requirest submission, and yet 
 seekest not to move the will by threatening aught that would arouse 
 natural aversion or terror, but merely holdest forth a law which of 
 itself finds entrance into the mind, and yet gains reluctant reverence 
 (though not always obedience), a law before which all inclinations 
 are dumb even though they secretly counter-work it! What origin 
 is there worthy of thee, and where is to be found the root of thy 
 noble descent, which proudly rejects all kindred with the inclinations ; 
 a root to be derived from which is the indispensable condition of the 
 only worth which men can give themselves f" 
 
 "It can be nothing less than a power which elevates man above 
 himself which can enable a man to appreciate the obligation and ele- 
 vation of such a life" .... "This power," he proceeds to say, "is 
 nothing but personality, that is, freedom and independence of the 
 mechanism of nature, yet, regarded as a faculty of a being who is 
 subject to special laws, viz., pure, practical laws given by its own 
 reason, so that the person as belonging to the sensible world, is sub- 
 ject to his own personality as belonging to the intelligible world." l 
 
 This Power, this Personality, this Eternal Reason, is what both 
 philosophy and common speech, as well as religion, unite in calling, 
 and in reverencing as, — God. 
 
 "God," says Green, "is not merely a Being who has made us," 
 but "He is a Being in whom we exist; with whom we are in prin- 
 ciple one ; with whom the human spirit is identical, in the sense that 
 He is all which the human spirit is capable of becoming.' ' 2 
 
 Even according to Mr. Spencer, the greatest authority on Evo- 
 lution, at the end of all scientific and philosophic inquiries, we are 
 brought into the presence of "an infinite and omnipresent Energy 
 from which all things proceed." 3 
 
 "Science and philosophy," writes Macpherson, "long divided by 
 
 1 Cr. of Pr. R., trans., p. 189. 
 
 -' Troleg., p. 198. 
 
 3 Macpherson, Spencer and Spencerisin, p. 90. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 6? 
 
 such watchwords as Materialism and Idealism, are now beginning to 
 unite in recognition of the fact that Matter is not dead, inert, but 
 alive and everywhere palpitating with energies, and that organic 
 life is no special creation, but simply a highly specialized and com- 
 plex form of the universal life of Nature. So far from Mr. Spencer 
 being a Materialist, he might more correctly be described as an 
 Idealist. So far from thinking that life is a product of Matter, he 
 has clearly indicated that in his view Matter itself is a form of life. 
 In his own words: 'Under one of its aspects, scientific progress is 
 a gradual transfiguration of Nature. Where ordinary perception saw 
 perfect simplicity, it reveals great complexity; where there seems 
 absolute inertness it discloses intense activity; and in what appears 
 mere vacancy it finds a marvellous play of forces. Each generation 
 of physicists discovers in so-called "brute-matter" powers which but 
 a few years before the most instructed physicists would have thought 
 incredible. When the explorer of nature sees that, quiescent as they 
 appear, surrounding solid bodies are thus sensitive to forces which 
 are infinitesimal in their amounts — when the spectroscope proves to 
 him that molecules on the earth pulsate in harmony with molecules in 
 the stars — When there is forced on him the inference that every point 
 in space thrills with an infinity of vibrations passing through it in 
 all directions ; the conception to which he tends is much less that of a 
 universe of dead matter than that of a universe everywhere alive; 
 alive, if not in the restricted sense, still in the general sense.' " 
 
 Thus even Herbert Spencer, High-priest of Science, and Arch- 
 materialist though he is supposed to be, prefers, and is philosophic- 
 ally led, to interpret the universe in terms of spirit rather than of 
 matter. So also Wallace, co-discoverer with Darwin of the origin of 
 species through natural selection, reaches the conclusion "that the 
 whole universe is not merely dependent on, but actually is the will of 
 higher intelligence, or of one Supreme Intelligence." l 
 
 With such views as the foregoing, philosophy is no longer mere- 
 ly philosophy. It has become religion. Ethics, through metaphy- 
 sics, has "passed on" 2 to religion. Morality "issues in," 3 and there- 
 after "survives within," 4 religion. Evolution becomes immanent 
 teleology. 
 
 1 Quoted by Williams, R. of E. E., p. 20. 
 
 2 Martineau, T. of E. T., Vol. II., p. 405. 
 
 3 Bradley, E. S., p. 280. 
 
 4 Ibid, p. 298. 
 
68 EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 • 
 
 We may sum up the conclusions we have reached as follows : — 
 In Evolution, God is but realizing Himself, His will, His 
 purpose, in the universe which He has created according to 
 fixed laws and for a definite object. In more scientific language, 
 the highest explanation of the universe is teleological. The facts of 
 science, and the reasoning of philosophy, disclose an intelligent and a 
 moral order. The universe is best understood in the light of the 
 ideal : there are ideal implications throughout, that express themselves, 
 particularly in the moral realm, in ethical values and in ethical judg- 
 ments. An Evolutionistic explanation of the universe does not lead 
 necessarily to a utilitarian ethics, because of the ideal factors in- 
 volved. The ideal remains the chief element in the moral ; and an 
 explanation of the origin of the moral that does not take into due 
 account this factor, is not a complete explanation of the origin of 
 morality. The chief intrinsic factor has been omitted. It is like 
 the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out. Morality is not fully 
 understood, its character not completely accounted for, until it is 
 carried back, or up, to its source and origin in the nature and will of 
 the Ground of all existence, the Spring of all progress, the Cause of 
 all development, the Mind and Heart and Will of an omnipotent, 
 omniscient and eternal God. 
 
 'Were it not," remarked Martineau, ■ "for this last and culminat- 
 ing stage, the evolution even of human conduct would never earn 
 even the name of moral at all. So long as it is pushed on from be- 
 hind, knowing not whither it goes ; so long as it only slips more and 
 more happily into the groove of movement and advance, it is simply 
 success without a particle of character." 
 
 "Not till this necessary causation is replaced by the free, and 
 for the spontaneous is substituted the voluntary, not till the 'selec- 
 tion' passes from Nature to Thought, and is determined propheti- 
 cally for an end, instead of mechanically from the beginning, does 
 the progressive change in human action and in social laws become 
 any more moral than, in the pigeon, the acquisition of his tumbling 
 trick or the growth of his portentous crop. And when the trans- 
 ference of the process to the Will has taken place, the theory of 
 evolution is no longer an hypothesis in natural history, but merges in 
 the conception of indefinite possible approach to moral perfection.". 
 
 1 T. of E. T., p. 406. 
 
EVOLUTIONISM AND IDEALISM IN ETHICS. go 
 
 Thus Evolutionism and Idealism in Ethics, supposed to be so 
 contrary, and even diametrically opposed, to one another, not merely 
 converge in many particulars, but merge, and absolutely blend, in 
 the unification of morality with religion, through the identification of 
 Evolution with Self-Realization of Conscious Will. Their differences 
 and discordances are reconciled, and completely harmonized, with the 
 uttering of that one word, and the attaining, though by different 
 paths, to that sublime thought, which is the summit and crown of 
 speculation as of life, — the Word of Words, the Thought of 
 Thoughts, the Fact of Facts; Ground of all Reality, Basis of all 
 Progress, Goal of all Development; Sanction of all Morality, Ideal 
 of all Religion ; Substance, Mind, Spirit, Reason ; Generalization of 
 all particulars, and of every generalization the Highest Generaliza- 
 tion ; Absolutely Supreme Unifying Principle and Essence and 
 Energy,— GOD ! 
 
 "That God which ever lives and loves, 
 One God, one law, one element, 
 And one far-off, divine event 
 To which the whole creation moves." 
 

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