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

by W. R. Sorley

[Footnote 1: Descent of Man, Part I. chap. v. p. 203 (new ed., 1901).]

But when he comes to the case of civilised men he finds a difficulty. "With savages," he says, "the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment…. The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts…. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature[1]." This sympathy, which natural selection cannot preserve or vindicate even in the struggle of communities, is nevertheless recognised by Darwin as having a moral value outside of and above natural selection and the struggle for existence,—a value of which these have no right to judge. He thinks that if we followed hard reason—and by 'hard reason' he obviously means an imitation on our part of the action of natural selection—we should be led to sweep away all those institutions by which civilised mankind guards its weaker members. But this, he says, would be only to deteriorate the "noblest part of our nature." What is noblest in our nature, then, is not that which natural selection has favoured or maintained. There is, therefore, implied in his view a limitation of the ethical significance of the principle of natural selection. For, when we come to this crucial question of conduct, it is not allowed to give any criterion of moral validity. More comprehensive attempts on the same lines as Darwin's have been made subsequently; and various writers have tried to show how the moral criterion may be resolved into social efficiency, or how it may be derived from a problematic future state of the human race on this earth when the need for struggle has disappeared and all things go smoothly. The former view may be found in Sir Leslie Stephen's 'Science of Ethics'; the latter is the peculiar property of Mr Herbert Spencer. Somewhat unwillingly I must for the present leave these special views without consideration,[2] because I wish to bring out still more plainly the various attitudes of the evolutionists to morality, and especially to draw attention to a view very different from those just mentioned, though not altogether without support in Darwin, which, as put forward some years ago by the late Professor Huxley[3], produced no little flutter in scientific dovecots.

[Footnote 1: Descent of Man, pp. 205, 206.]

[Footnote 2: For a discussion of these views I may be allowed to refer to my' Ethics of Naturalism,' chap. viii. (chap. ix. in the new edition). The same volume contains a more exhaustive examination than is possible in this lecture of the whole subject of evolutionist ethics.]

[Footnote 3: The Romanes Lecture, 1893, "Evolution and Ethics." In 1894 this was republished, with prolegomena, in vol. ix. of 'Collected Essays,' with the title, "Evolution and Ethics, and other Essays.">[

Professor Huxley reviewed what he called the cosmic process as it was guided by the law of evolution. He showed how at each step of that process new results were only attained by enormous waste and pain on the part of those living creatures which were thrust aside as unfit for their surroundings, and he held consequently that the whole cosmic process is of an entirely different character from what we must mean when we use the term 'moral.' According to him morality is opposed to the method of evolution, and cannot be based upon the theory of evolution. It is of independent worth; but Professor Huxley, perhaps wisely, refrained from investigating its justification, while enforcing "the apparent paradox that ethical nature, while born of cosmic nature, is necessarily at enmity with its parent"

"The practice of that which is ethically best—what we call goodness or virtue—involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help, his fellows; its influence is directed, not so much to the survival of the fittest, as to the fitting of as many as possible to survive. It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence…. 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."[1]

[Footnote 1: Evolution and Ethics, pp. 81-83.]

Here, then, is a view very different from the easy optimism of Mr Herbert Spencer. The cosmic order has nothing to say to the moral order, except that, somehow or other, it has given it birth; the moral order has nothing to say to the cosmic order, except that it is certainly bad. Morality is occupied in opposing the methods of evolution.

Still another view is possible. It may be held that the morality of self-restraint and self-sacrifice are opposed—as Huxley says they are opposed—to the methods of cosmic evolution; and yet the "gladiatorial theory of existence" may not be repudiated; but morality may be modified to suit the claims of evolution. This is the position adopted by the philosopher Nietzsche, whose whole thought is permeated by the idea of evolution. Like Professor Huxley, Nietzsche might say that morality is opposed to the cosmic process. But by morality he would mean something that is not to be encouraged, but that is to be shed from human life, or at least fundamentally transformed, just because it is in opposition to the laws of cosmic progress. On the other hand, the morality—if we may use the term—which the cosmic process teaches us will be a development of the conceptions of self-assertion and self-reliance, qualities which, according to ordinary morality—the morality, for instance, of Professor Huxley—require to be permeated and even superseded by self-restraint and possibly self-sacrifice in order that the moral law may be satisfied. Not obedience, not mutual help, not benevolence, but the will to rule or desire of power, is with Nietzsche fundamental, the primary impulse in the history of the whole progress of the world, and still of first importance for the further development of mankind.