Recent Tendencies in Ethics | Page 9

about reality. In particular, the scientific thought of
the last generation has been reformed under the, influence of the group
of ideas which constitute the theory of evolution. There is hardly a
department of thought which this new doctrine has not touched; and
upon morality its influence may seem to be peculiarly important and
direct. The theory of evolution, as put forward by Darwin, has
established certain positions which have been regarded as of special
significance for ethics.
In the first place, it is an assertion of the unity of life. And we must not
limit the generality of this proposition. It is not merely a denial of the
fixity of species, an assertion that there are no natural kinds so
inseparable from one another that each must be the result of a distinct
creative act. It is also an assertion that human life must be treated as a
part in the larger whole of organic being, that the mind of man is
continuous with animal perception, that moral activity is continuous
with non-moral impulse. And the assertion of the unity of life is at the
same time an assertion of the progress of life. What we call the higher
forms are in all cases developments from simpler and lower forms.
Further, the method of this progress has been described. Herein indeed
lay Darwin's most important achievement. He detected and
demonstrated the operation of a factor hitherto unsuspected. This new
factor to which he drew attention as the chief agent in organic
development was called by him 'natural selection,' The name has a
positive sound and suggests a process of active choice. But Darwin was
fully aware that the process to which he gave this name was a negative
and not a positive operation; and as such it was clearly recognised by
him. The name was, no doubt, chosen simply to bring out the fact that
the same kind of results as those which man produces by conscious and
artificial selection may be arrived at without conscious purpose by the
operation of merely natural forces. Instead of the 'fit' being directly
chosen or encouraged, what happens is simply that the 'unfit' die out or

are exterminated, so that room to live and means of life are left for the
survivors.
What may be meant by this idea of 'fitness'--which meets us in the
famous phrase that the 'survival of the fittest' in the struggle for life is
the goal of evolution--is a question which brings us at once to the
consideration of the ethical significance of the theory. For it seems to
lay claim to give both an explanation of progress and an interpretation
of what constitutes worth in conduct.

II.
ETHICS AND EVOLUTION.
There are two things which are not always kept distinct,--what may be
called the 'evolution of ethics' and the 'ethics of evolution,' The former
might more correctly be called the evolution of morality,--the account
of the way in which moral customs, moral institutions, and moral ideas
have been developed and have come to take their place in the life of
mankind. Clearly these are all features of human life; and, if the theory
of evolution applies to human life, we must expect it also to have some
contribution to make to this portion of man's development,--to the
growth of the customs, institutions, and ideas which enter into and
make up his morality.
But by the 'ethics of evolution' is meant something more than the
'evolution of ethics' or development of morality. It signifies a theory
which turns the facts of evolution to account in determining the value
for man of different kinds of conduct and feeling and idea. When one
speaks of the ethics of evolution one must be understood to mean that
the evolution theory does something more than trace the history of
things, that it gives us somehow or other a standard or criterion of
moral worth or value. This additional point may be expressed by the
technical distinction between origin and validity. Clearly there is a very
great difference between showing how something has come to be what
it is and assigning to it worth or validity for the guidance of life or
thought It may be that the former enquiry has some bearing upon the
latter; but only confusion will result if the two problems are not clearly
distinguished at the outset,--as they very seldom are distinguished by
writers on the theory of evolution in its application to ethics.
It may be said that the evolutionist writers on ethics seek to base an

ethics of evolution upon the evolution of ethics, but that they are not
always aware of the real nature and difficulties of their task. Sometimes
they seem to think that in tracing the evolution of ethics they are also
and