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

evolution,' The former might more correctly be called the evolution of morality,-the account of the way in which moral cu

fe, we must expect it also to have some contribution to make to this portion of man's development

the evolution theory does something more than trace the history of things, that it gives us somehow or other a standard or criterion of moral worth or value. This additional point may be expressed by the technical distinction between origin and validity. Clearly there is a very great difference between showing how something has come to be what

n of ethics they are also and at the same time determining and establishing a theory of the ethics of evolution. We must avoid this error, and keep the two problems distinct in our minds. Yet from the nature of the case it holds true that it is only through the fa

f historical investigation-which is his own field-than he would, if fair-minded, claim for himself. The problem I have in view lies beyond this historical question. It is the problem how far the known facts and probable theories regarding the development of morality can make any contribution towards determining the standa

y that the qualities which are recognised as moral are not by any means in all cases contributory to individual success and efficiency. They are not all of them qualities that contribute to the success of one individual in his struggle with other individuals for the means of subsistence. We may say that courage, prudence, self-reliance, will have that effect, and that consequently in the struggle for life the individuals who show such qualities will have a better chance of survival than those without them. But what about qualities such as sympathy, willingness to help another, obedience, and faithfulness to a community or to a cause? Clearly, these are not qualities which are of special assistance to the individual. But they are qualiti

alities. Darwin, however, saw further than this: he saw that, while this might account for the development of what we may call savage and barbarian virtues, there was in civilised mankind a development o

the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacr

Man, Part I. chap. v.

s, 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 lin

escent of Man,

ralism,' chap. viii. (chap. ix. in the new edition). The same volume contains a more exhaust

894 this was republished, with prolegomena, in vol. ix. of 'Collecte

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

elf-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 a

olution and Eth

o say to the moral order, except that, somehow or other, it has given it birth; the moral order has nothing to sa

ight 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

duces nothing, that its operation is purely negative. It does not properly select at all, it only excludes. What it does is to cut off the unfit specimens of living beings which nature supplies. It would have no field of operation were it not for the variety of nature. While individuals tend to repeat the characteristics of their parents, they do not repeat them without change: the principle of heredity is counter

experiments in living and in morality so that we may see whether success will justify them? An affirmativ

tive and productive ones, shall no longer be sacrificed; it shall not even be deemed a disgrace to stray from morals either in deeds or thoughts; numerous new experiments shall be made in matters of l

e, Werke, iv. 161, 16

sed to the cosmic process as ruled by natural selection; and, in the third place, there is the view of Nietzsche that the principles of biological development (variation, that is to say, and natural selection) should be allowed free play so that, in the future as in the past, successful variations may be struck out by triumphant egoism. Neither these views, nor the still more elaborate treatment of Spencer, do I propose to examine in detail. But I wish to offer some reflexions upon

ies which natural selection will favour are of course the qualities which lead to the continuance and efficiency of the individual organism. The qualitie

competition between groups it is clear that those qualities will be favoured by natural selection which contribute to the efficiency of the group; and the qualities which contribute to the efficiency of the group are not those only which contribute to the efficiency of the individual, but also qualities implying self-restraint and even self-sacrifice on the part of one member of the group for

econd class) the competition between institutions, including therein also habits and customs. The various institutions in our national life, and the various habits of our life, may be said to be forms which have to maintain themselves often in competition with other and antagonistic forms of institution. The same holds of our various ideas or general conceptions, whether about morality, which we have now specially in view, or

the same time within the same community, that they compete with one another for existence, and that gradually those which are better adapted to the life of the community survive, while the others grow weaker and in

as Darwin said, that even this competition will not account for the civilised development of sympathy. But even so we are not at the end of our tether; and we can fall back on the conflict of ideas. The idea of sympathy or of altruism, for instance, may conflict with some other idea, such as that of egoism. At first the competition is a group-competition, in which the group with altruistic members succeeds at the expense of the egoistic group. By the victory of the former our society becomes more and more a society whose basis is sympathy and all that

after a controversy of some forty years, the former idea almost disappeared, and in the minds at any rate of those who know, the Darwinian theory became victorious. Was it natural selection that brought about the result? To test the matter let us ask once more how natural selection operates. Its mode of operation is always simply negative. And if, in the strugg

anted the traditional theory of the fixity of species? Surely it is clear that it is only in the rarest cases that false or inadequate ideas on such subjects have any tendency to shorten life or weaken health. Bishop Wilberforce was killed by a fall from his horse, not by the triumphant dialectic of Professor Huxley. Sir Richard Owen lived to a patriarchal old age, and did not disappear from the face of the earth because he still clung to an idea which the best intellect of his time had relinquished.

was therefore not natural selection at all which led to the presence and power of the one idea rather than the other in the minds of thoughtful men. One idea was deliberately accepted and the other deliberately rejected. The former was accepted on grounds of which the most general account would be, if we may use the term, to call them subjective. But natural selection is a

telligent selection, that he ventured to use this term 'selection' of the process of nature. Perhaps he was hardly justified in adopting the term, as nature does not select; she only passes by. At the same time, artificial selection also includes, although it is not limited to, this negative or weeding-out process. When you select a certain plant for growth in your garden you w

rsues its ends more directly and in general attains them far more quickly than does natural selection. A still more striking characteristic is the fact that it does not entail the waste and pain which mark the course of natural selection. Witness the records of natural selection in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, where thousands are called into fruitless being that one alone may survive and prosper. Wastefulness is the most striking feature of its meth

of the greatest possible gains to living beings: its presence distinguishes men from animals; its predominance distinguishes civilised men from savages; the higher the stage of civilisation, the more marked is the

have contributed to the victory of the community possessing them. All through civilised life, and probably throughout a great part of savage life, there is the keenest enquiry into and perception of the qualities which will make for success. These qualities are carefully selected and positively fostered. You drill your armies-that is, you cultivate the habit of discipline and all that discipl

natural selection makes play with this result, cutting off the unfit and leaving only those who are fairly well adapted to their positions. Something of this sort no doubt takes place to a limited extent; but, so far as it does take place, our methods are denounced as defective and, perhaps, as old-fashioned. 'Haphaz

exual selection, where there is a positive choosing, due no doubt not to intelligent purpose but nevertheless to a subjective impulse. This marks the beginning of the end of the reign of natural selection, because in it for the purely obje

od ground for taking the lower, the less developed, method of selection as our guide in preference to the higher and more developed. Surely we are not to take natural selection as the sole factor of ethical import because we see it at the crude beginnings of life on this earth, while the process of life itself in its higher ranges passes beyond natural selection. The physiological interpre

aim 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

we also have an understanding of human activity. This, therefore, is the counter-claim that I would suggest. The course and method of evolution,

uliarities 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 ca

' 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 t

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 survi

ll 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 domi

duction, 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

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 f

Principles of

between individuals, and it operates as between groups,-although in the latter operation especially it is always mixed with other forces than natural s

n theory can give to this question is, that when individual fights with individual, the man with stronger egoistic qualities will succeed, and that when group fights group, those groups that possess stronger altruistic qualities will tend to success. But which set of qualities we are to cultivate, or whether we are to manifest a sort of balance of the two, is a question upon which we can get no light from the theory of evolution consi

All one can get out of it is certain canons for living, but none for good living. It may draw one's attention to this fact, if anybody's

hings: first of all, the difficulties in the application of natural selection itself with its divergent tendencies; and, secondly, the fact that this process of evolution has itself resulted in the de

h the institutions of the time to which they belonged. Their tendency, accordingly, is to restrict ethics to the question of origin and history and description, to deprive it altogether of what is sometimes called its normative character-that is to say, its character as a science whic

olution and descent, if he would be consistent, must deal less scrupulously with them than perhaps any one has yet been found to do. If he has the cou

to give up the attempt which they started on so confidently thirty years ago,-the attempt to show that evolution affords a means of deciding between right and wrong and of establishing an i

t up. Human action implies choice, implies the selection of one course rather than another; and the course that is chosen is always chosen for some reason, because it seems better than the course which is passed by. Choice always follows some kind of princip

the individual? The conflict between individual development and group development is continually pressing to the front The individual cannot reach a high stage of development except in and through a highly developed society. But the efficiency which a highly developed society requires of its members is not the same as individual development; it more commonly implies a specialisation which tends to warp or cramp ind

w. It is specially absurd to say that earlier methods must govern later developments. That is what is done when we are asked to take as our guide in voluntary choice a principle which ignores volition. The whole progress from animal to man and from savage to civilised man shows a gr

man's conduct into relation with the world as a whole. No doubt the environment which more immediately surrounds man is a succession of changing phenomena, so that although the basis we get is objective, nevertheless it is unable to give us a permanent standard of reference. At the same time we may trace in this theory some advance on the older types of ethical thinking spoken of in last lecture. Subjectivi

s, indeed, its predominant characteristic as a body of knowledge. It may begin with the part, if you like, with the 'flower in the crannied wall'; but when that is seen in all its relations to the rest of the world, then you will 'kn

like any other science. It is a process or the result of a process of knowledge. It seeks to know reality as a whole, and in knowing a part to know it in its relations to the whole. Religion al

he natural sciences are the only reality which is knowable; man's nature is part of these and has to be adapted to them, and there is nothing further with which it can be brought into relation. This theory is not the same as the scientific theory of evolution, nor is it a necessary consequence of it; but in the minds of many the two go to