Recent Tendencies in Ethics / Three Lectures to Clergy Given at Cambridge

by W. R. Sorley

After this long enquiry into the nature and scope of natural selection, we should be better prepared to understand the degree and kind of ethical significance which can be rightly assigned to the theory of evolution. In the first place let us consider the now familiar claim that man must be taken as part of the cosmos, and that man's conduct must be regarded and studied in its place in the cosmic process. At the time when it was first made this claim may have seemed a startling one; but I think that we must admit that, keeping to their own ground and using the instruments that are theirs by right, the evolutionist writers have succeeded in showing man's connexion with the animal kingdom and with organic life generally, and thus his place in the whole cosmic process. The claim must therefore be admitted.

But if man is part of the universe, then the universe is not intelligible apart from man, and the cosmic process is not fully understood unless we also have an understanding of human activity. This, therefore, is the counter-claim that I would suggest. The course and method of evolution, or of the 'cosmic process'—to use Huxley's term—is imperfectly described if the methods and principles of human action are left out of account.

No doubt the reply may be made, as the reply has been made, that after all man occupies but a minute space in the cosmos, that he is but an insignificant speck on an unimportant planet. But, if this is at all meant to imply that we may safely leave the peculiarities of human activity out of account, then I say that the suggestion hardly deserves consideration. Surely the assumption is too gross and unwarrantable that material magnitude is the standard of importance, or that the significance of man's life can be measured by the size of his material organism. We must therefore never delude ourselves with the idea that we have a full account of the cosmos or the cosmic process unless we have taken account of the peculiarities of man's nature and man's activity.

In the second place, the discussion of the principle of natural selection suggests a further reflexion. The process of natural selection is a process which always tends to some end, because by it some organisms are selected, and they are the organisms which are fittest to live. By 'fittest' is of course meant that which is best adapted to the environment, or, as it is simply a question of survival, that which so fits the conditions of the environment that it is able to survive. The canon of the principle of natural selection is on the face of it relative. No one would say that the principle can be interpreted as an absolute law for conduct, after the fashion of the absolute laws laid down by the rationalist moralists; what is involved is simply a gelation to one's surroundings. One must keep in touch with them, one must adapt oneself to them, in order to live.

But I wish to point out that the principle is not only relative, but that its relation is limited to certain features of the environment which surrounds mankind, namely, to those features and those features only which prevent organisms unsuited to the conditions of life from surviving at all. The only way in which natural selection works is by killing off rapidly or gradually the organisms which are not fitted to obtain from the environment the means of life—that is to say, it has to do with life only, with the continuance of life as a possible material phenomenon. Given that the organisms are fit enough to survive, given that their animal vitality is not diminished, a question remains: what is the standard of worthy survival? and to that question the process and principle of natural selection can give no answer. To use the old distinction: even if it is able to account for being, it can give no standard for wellbeing.

Now the environment of civilised man is a great deal larger in range than those material phenomena which contribute to his nourishment and thus to his existence as an animal organism. No doubt his first effort is to maintain himself as an animal—that is the condition of all his subsequent activity—but he seeks also to suit himself to an environment which is wider and subtler than merely animal conditions of life; to adapt himself to society, perhaps only as a member of it, perhaps also as a leader or reformer; to adapt himself to the dominant ideas of his time, absorbing them, perhaps also modifying them; to adapt himself to a whole region of interests which may in our life be built upon an animal basis, but of which the animal basis gives no explanation—interests social, artistic, intellectual, spiritual.

It is correct, therefore, to say of man that his environment is much larger than the material universe; it is whatever he conceives the universe as being, and whatever it can be for him: whether he seeks from it merely intellectual understanding, whether he regards it as a vehicle for artistic production, or whether he may see in it an opportunity for realising his own being by fulfilling the will of God—perhaps by submerging his own individuality in deity. The objects of philosophy, art, and religion,—all these are parts of the environment of civilised man, and yet his self-adaptation to them has no direct effect whatever upon his continuance on the earth as an animal organism. In other words, the process of natural selection can give us no canon at all for putting a value upon these various activities, or upon the way in which man adapts himself to these parts of his environment.

It is said by Mr Herbert Spencer that "we must interpret the more developed by the less developed";[1] and the inference would seem to be that, as animal existence is the basis of all higher activities, we must interpret these by it. But if this claim can be admitted at all, it can only be if our aim goes no further than to trace a historical process. If we desire to understand capacity or function—still more if we speak of worth or goodness—then it is much more correct to say that we must interpret the less developed by the more developed. If you wish to trace the growth of the oak-tree from its earliest beginnings to maturity, then study the acorn and the soil; but if you wish to know what the capacity and the function of the acorn are, then you must interpret the less developed by the more developed, you must see what an oak is like when it spreads its branches under the heavens.

[Footnote 1: Principles of Ethics, i. 7.]

In the third place, the way in which the action of natural selection differs according to circumstances affects its ethical significance. It operates as between individuals, and it operates as between groups,—although in the latter operation especially it is always mixed with other forces than natural selection. The competition between individuals favours egoistic qualities, the competition between groups favours qualities which may be called altruistic.