I can devise no more extravagant hypothesis. But though, if it were true, the “fitness” of the higher morality might seem to have found an explanation, it is not the explanation we require. It is too external. It gives no account of the appeal which the nobler ends of action make to our judgments of intrinsic value. It suggests the way in which a higher ideal might increase the number of its possessors at the expense of a lower, but not the way in which the higher ideal might itself arise. Indeed, we must go further. Few are the moralists who would maintain that indifference to worldly triumphs was not, on the whole, a bar to their attainment. Few are the biologists who would maintain that care and kindness, lavished on the biologically unfit, will never tend to diminish the relative number of the biologically fit. But, if so, we must agree with Nietzsche in thinking that ethical values have become “denaturalised.” In their primitive forms the products of selection, they have, by a kind of internal momentum, overpassed their primitive purpose. Made by nature for a natural object, they have developed along lines which are certainly independent of selection, perhaps in opposition to it. And though not as remote from their first manifestations as is the æsthetic of men from the æsthetic of monkeys, no evolutionary explanation will bridge the interval. If we treat the Sermon on the Mount as a naturalistic product, it is as much an evolutionary accident as Hamlet or the Ninth Symphony.

IV

In what setting, then, are we to place morality so that these “denaturalised” values may be retained? Can we be content to regard the highest loyalties, the most devoted love, the most limitless self-abnegation as the useless excesses of a world-system, which in its efforts to adapt organism to environment has overshot its mark?

I deem it impossible. The naturalistic setting must be expanded into one which shall give the higher ethics an origin congruous with their character. Selection must be treated as an instrument of purpose, not simply as its mimic. Theistic teleology must be substituted for Naturalism. Thus, and thus only, can moral values, as it seems to me, be successfully maintained.

This would not, I suppose, have been denied by Nietzsche and Nietzsche’s predecessors in revolt. On the contrary, they would admit the interdependence of morals and religion, as these are commonly understood in Christendom, and they would condemn both. It would, however, have been vehemently denied by agnostics like Huxley; for Huxley accepted, broadly speaking, Christian ethics, while refusing to accept the Christian, or, indeed, any other form of theology.

In my opinion, this position is not permanently tenable. I do not mean that it involves a logical contradiction. I do mean that it involves an emotional and doctrinal incompatibility of a very fundamental kind. And this is a defect which may be even more fatal than logical contradiction to the stability of ethical beliefs.

For what was Huxley’s position? His condemnation of evolutionary ethics was far more violent than my own. He states categorically that “What is ethically best involves conduct which in all respects is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence.” On a biological question I differ from him with misgiving; but, as I have already urged, selection may plausibly be credited with the earlier stages of the noblest virtues. I cannot think that the mother who sacrifices herself for her child, the clansman who dies for his chief, the generation which suffers for the sake of its posterity, are indulging in “conduct which is in all respects opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence.” But, whether Huxley be right on this point or I, it is surely impossible for the mass of mankind to maintain, at the cost of much personal loss, an ideal of conduct which science tells us is not merely an evolutionary accident, but an evolutionary mistake; something which was, and is, contrary to the whole trend of the cosmic process which brought us into being, and made us what we are. It requires but a small knowledge of history to show how easily mankind idealises nature; witness such phrases as “the return to nature,” the “state of nature,” “natural rights,” “natural law,” and so forth. Appeals founded upon these notions have proved powerful, even when they ran counter to individualistic selfishness. When the two are in alliance, how can they be resisted? Is it possible for the ordinary man to maintain undimmed his altruistic ideals if he thinks Nature is against them?—unless, indeed he also believes that God is on their side?

V

Here are questions raised to which there is no parallel in the case of æsthetics. Doubtless differences of æsthetic judgment abound; but they do not produce difficulties quite matching those due to the collision of incompatible ends; nor is their solution so important. On this subject I must say a few words before bringing this lecture to a conclusion.

Possible collisions between ends are many, for ends themselves are many. And of these ends some are in their very nature irreconcilable;—based on essential differences which reflection only makes more apparent, and moral growth more profound.