"In order to convince ourselves of the wonderful power of the sense of duty among animals, we need only to destroy an ant-hill. Immediately we see, in the midst of the destruction, thousands of zealous citizens employed, not in the rescue of their own precious lives, but in the protection of the beloved community to which they belong. Brave soldiers of the ant-state prepare to offer strong resistance to our intruding finger; instructors of youth rescue the so-called ant-eggs, the precious larvæ, on which the future of the state depends; busy workers immediately begin with undiminished courage to clear away the ruins and to prepare new dwellings. But the admirable state of civilization among these ants, among bees and other social animals, has been developed, just as has been our own, from the rudest beginnings.
"Even those finest and most beautiful forms of human emotion which we especially celebrate in poetry are to be found prefigured among the animals. Have not the tender mother-love of the lioness, the touching affection between male and female parrots, the self-sacrificing fidelity of the dog, been long proverbial? The noblest emotions of sympathy and love, which direct action, are here, as with human beings, nothing else than ennobled instinct." Beginning with this conception, the Ethics of Evolution has to seek for no new principle, but, on the contrary, to trace back the old rules of duty to their scientific basis. Long before the rise of all church-religion, these natural commandments regulated the lawful relations of human beings, as of gregarious animals. This significant fact the church-religions should utilize, instead of disputing. For the future does not belong to that Theology which declares war against the triumphant Theory of Evolution, but to that which makes it its own, acknowledges it, and turns it to advantage.
"Far, therefore, from fearing, from the influence of the Theory of Evolution, a subversion of all accepted moral law and a destructive emancipation of Egoism, we, on the contrary, look forward to a system of Ethics erected upon the indestructible foundation of unchanging natural law, since at the same time with the clear recognition of our true place in nature, the study of Anthropogeny opens to us the comprehension of the necessary character of our old rules of duty. Like theoretical science, Practical Philosophy and Pedagogy will no longer derive their most important principles from so-called revelations, but from the scientific truths of Evolution. This victory of Monism over Dualism opens to us a most hopeful prospect of an unending continuation of our moral, as of our intellectual evolution. In this sense, we welcome the Theory of Evolution in its present form newly stated by Darwin, as a challenge—the most important challenge of pure and applied science."
As touching on the idea of a nature-religion as conceived by Haeckel, may be noticed, however, a passage which occurs at the end of chapter XII. of the "Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte," as well as the passage before referred to in which it is asserted that we know only causæ efficientes, never causæ finales. The passage is as follows: "The general significance of the degenerated or rudimentary organs in the most important questions of natural philosophy cannot be over-estimated. On these may be founded a theory of Disteleology as opposed to the ancient, usual Teleology."
With especial theories of Heredity advocated by Haeckel we are not concerned, except in one respect. Even in the first edition of his "Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte," Haeckel makes a distinction between conservative and progressive inheritance, and in the edition of 1889 he still maintains this division against Weismann and others, claiming the heredity of acquired habit, under certain circumstances, and showing conclusively that even wounds and blemishes received during the life of an individual may be, in some instances, inherited by descendants.[36] The laws of progressive heredity he gives as four: (1) the law of the inheritance of adaptation; (2) the law of the surer inheritance of qualities fixed by continual operation of its causes on individual generations; (3) the law of homochronous inheritance or inheritance at a corresponding age; (4) the law of homotypous inheritance, which may be otherwise called the law of inheritance in corresponding parts of the body.[37]
Having thus glanced at the special theories by which the great original authorities paved the way for a system of Evolutional Ethics, we may direct our attention to the more purely philosophical writers who have turned these theories to advantage and elaborated them. The first on the list is
FOOTNOTES:
[34] P. 703 et seq.
[35] Erster Vortrag.
[36] P. 194 et seq.