IV
Can it be that the Cosmic Process has no Relation to Moral Ends?
But as long as we confine our attention to the universal struggle for life and the survival of the fittest, without certain qualifications presently to be mentioned, it is difficult for the most profound intelligence to arrive at conclusions much more satisfactory than Caliban's. If the spirit shown in Nature's works as thus contemplated is not one of wanton mockery, it seems at any rate to be a spirit of stolid indifference. It indicates a Blind Force rather than a Beneficent Wisdom at the source of things. It is in some such mood as this that Huxley tells us, in his famous address delivered at Oxford, in 1893, that there is no sanction for morality in the Cosmic Process. "Men in society," he says, "are undoubtedly subject to the cosmic process. As among other animals, multiplication goes on without cessation and involves severe competition for the means of support. The struggle for existence tends to eliminate those less fitted to adapt themselves to the circumstances of their existence. The strongest, the most self-assertive, tend to tread down the weaker.... Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which exist, but of those who are ethically the best." Again, says Huxley, "let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it." And again he tells us that while the moral sentiments have undoubtedly been evolved, yet since "the immoral sentiments have no less been evolved, there is so far as much natural sanction for the one as for the other." And yet again, "the cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends."
When these statements were first made they were received with surprise, and they have since called forth much comment, for they sound like a retreat from the position which an evolutionist is expected to hold. They distinctly assert a breach of continuity between evolution in general and the evolution of Man in particular; and thus they have carried joy to the hearts of sundry theologians, of the sort that like to regard Man as an infringer upon Nature. If there is no natural sanction for morality, then the sanction must be supernatural, and forthwith such theologians greet Huxley as an ally!
They are mistaken, however. Huxley does not really mean to assert any such breach of continuity as is here suggested. In a footnote to his printed address he makes a qualification which really cancels the group of statements I have quoted. "Of course," says Huxley, "strictly speaking, social life and the ethical process, in virtue of which it advances toward perfection, are part and parcel of the general process of evolution." Of course they are; and of course the general process of evolution is the cosmic process, it is Nature's way of doing things. But when my dear Huxley a moment ago was saying that the "cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends," he was using the phrase in a more restricted sense; he was using it as equivalent to what Darwin called "natural selection," what Spencer called "survival of the fittest," which is only one part of the cosmic process. Now most assuredly survival of the fittest, as such, has no sort of relation to moral ends. Beauty and ugliness, virtue and vice, are all alike to it. Side by side with the exquisite rose flourishes the hideous tarantula, and in too many cases the villain's chances of livelihood are better than the saints. As I said a while ago, if we confine our attention to the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence, we are not likely to arrive at conclusions much more satisfactory than Caliban's
"As it likes me each time, I do: So He."
In such a universe we may look in vain for any sanction for morality, any justification for love and self-sacrifice; we find no hope in it, no consolation; there is not even dignity in it, nothing whatever but resistless all-producing and all-consuming energy.
Such a universe, however, is not the one in which we live. In the cosmic process of evolution, whereof our individual lives are part and parcel, there are other agencies at work besides natural selection, and the story of the struggle for existence is far from being the whole story. I have thus far been merely stating difficulties; it is now time to point out the direction in which we are to look for a solution of them. I think it can be shown that the principles of morality have their roots in the deepest foundations of the universe, that the cosmic process is ethical in the profoundest sense, that in that far-off morning of the world, when the stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy, the beauty of self-sacrifice and disinterested love formed the chief burden of the mighty theme.