[16] Romanes Lecture on "Evolution and Ethics," 1893.
[17] As a matter of fact this dualism still lives. Thus it was lately defended by a correspondent of the New York Sun: "If there can be such a thing as an essential difference there surely is one between the animal evolution discovered by Darwin and the self-culture, progress and spiritual aspiration of man." Many other writers on the subject take the same position.
[18] See the article on "Monism" in the New International Encyclopedia.
[19] A. J. Balfour: "Fragment on Progress;" London, 1891.
[20] He was a monist, indeed, as early as 1873, at which time he had apparently not yet noticed Darwin's notion that the human race could successfully defy the law of natural selection. "The absence of any cardinal distinction between man and beast," he said, "is a doctrine which I consider true." ("Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen," I, 189.) Nevertheless, in a moment of sophistry, late in life, he undertook to criticize the law of natural selection and even to deny its effects (vide "Roving Expeditions of an Inopportune Philosopher," § 14, in "The Twilight of the Idols"). It is sufficient to say, in answer, that the law itself is inassailable and that all of Nietzsche's work, saving this single unaccountable paragraph, helps support it. His frequent sneers at Darwin, in other places, need not be taken too seriously. Everything English, toward the close of his life, excited his ire, but the fact remains that he was a thorough Darwinian and that, without Darwin's work, his own philosophy would have been impossible.
[21] This observation is as old as Montaigne, who said: "After all, the stoics were actually stoical, but where in all Christendom will you find a Christian?"