and which contains the mysterious and unknowable quantity; if we do not separate the notions, then is God identical with Nature or the Cosmos, plus the final mystery, where, however, only the first part of the conception, the cosmos itself, has any real and positive signification for our minds.

CHAPTER IV.

OBJECTIONS TO THE EVOLUTION ETHICS.

§ 1. THERE are some who apprehend from the whole new teaching, and especially from the Darwinian theory of the descent of man and of the origin of morals, something if possible more serious than the dethronement of a personal Ruler, the destruction, namely, of conscience, His last voice and representative on earth, of the moral law that the German transcendental philosophy, which destroyed so much else, had anew pronounced sacred.

There are those who are now becoming anxious for the fate of virtue itself, whose inmost essence and dearest life seem threatened by the doctrines of science. There is a deepening fear in desponding moments, at the hearts of men who are just and true and good, that the great ideal lights and guiding beacons of Truth and Justice and Benevolence are soon to be extinguished in the moral heavens; that, together with Religion, Morality also is about to receive her quietus; that along with faith and hope in a hereafter of compensation for so much amiss here, that which is greater than either faith or hope, namely, charity, the disinterested love and labour for others, for our kind, will slowly die in the hearts of men from the chilling, by the sciences economic and sociological, of the internal heat that

supported it, and through the teaching of our evolution moralists of the former low source and the present vulgar utilitarian sanction of the disinterested virtues. Even the sentiment of duty, it is feared, the sentiment that found a lodging-place in all but the most abandoned breasts, and that sometimes visited even these; the sentiment that some actions must be done and others left undone, without once counting cost or thinking of consequence;-even this, the source of all that is morally good or worthy in man, and which chiefly exalts him above the brute, seems in danger of being sapped by the psychological account of its origin in the individual, and by the evolutionist's account of its origin in the species.

Such are the fears, not to say the beliefs, of some; and it must be confessed that there are not wanting some grounds for the apprehensions. For what is virtue, according to the latest light thrown back on its origin, and according to the evolution interpretation of the facts? A thing of human contrivance, an invention which men were forced to make, as well from mutual fear as from selfish calculations, a discovery, a device, which if it had not been made neither their society nor themselves would have existed. Morality was at first, and still is in its essential features, a set of police regulations, devised originally by the more politic heads of the tribe to keep the unruly and anti-social spirits in order. It was devised in the general interest of the tribe, to produce harmony within, and strength against the external enemy. Morality, in short, was a discovery of man, like any other, a discovery easy to make, if necessity had not forced him to make it, since he had already inherited the moral germ from his humbler quadrumanous ancestors. He had but to improve and develop these, and

in doing so he had everywhere examples to copy from, in the ants, the bees, and other social animals existing around and practising the virtues of industry, disinterested labour, courage, and others necessary for the good of the community. Morality, in fact, was an invention, to which men, as well as other social animals, were driven by the necessity for it and encouraged to improve, by the utility of it. It was an invention, and, like all such, susceptible of improvement from age to age, as suited better to the altered social needs. of men. Moreover, it was susceptible of variation, as suited to the somewhat different social conditions of different people. It was not precisely immutable, as the former moralists represented it. The habits of veracity which suited one community with a particular moral nature and physical environment, would not equally suit another community; and hence, to tell the truth, might be honoured in one society and but lightly esteemed in another. But nevertheless, some virtues were necessary for all; and amongst these a minimum at least of what we reckon the cardinal virtuesveracity, justice, charity-were indispensable for the continuance of any, even the most incoherent, kind of social union.

On this account, certainly, Virtue, if she was not the earthly and baseborn child of fear and selfishness, as Hobbes had characterized her, had these at least as important constituent elements and shaping factors when she first appeared in the primitive human world. The story of her heaven-descended origin was a pleasant poetic fiction of later ages, invented by self-deluded but well-intentioned enthusiasts, the founders of religions, and encouraged by crafty and politic rulers and priests in their own interests, by moralists and poets in behalf of the general interests of

society. It was a fiction almost believed in by its first inventors, and justified by the disbeliever on account of its necessity for restraining the selfishness, and breaking in the boundless passions of the individuals composing the more primitive social organizations.

And now, if such were the true earthly origin of Virtue, the supposed offspring and "darling child" of Jove; and if her essence at bottom to-day in no way belies her selfish and utilitarian origin, as the teaching of Spencer and Darwin implies, then the question is raised, how can Conscience justify her present pretensions to be the absolute ruler of conduct? For that she now has, and legitimately has, such pretensions, is maintained no less in the amended utilitarianism of Spencer than in the high transcendental morality of Kant, or the modified English intuitional morality. It is maintained, but it is not explained. Again, if to assign the origin be to mark the limits and sphere of morality, as the evolution ethics seems to imply, how is it that Virtue has so far transcended alike her selfish and social origin? Still more, why should she aspire to do so? Why should she not confine herself to the earth, from which she sprang? why should she aspire ever to grander ideal heights, to a purer justice, to a more perfect and diffused truth, to a greater good embracing ever greater numbers? If selfishness lie essentially at the root of life and conduct, we should naturally expect it ought still to show itself in the grown flower of the most developed conduct. But does it do so? Is there not self-forgetting and self-sacrificing conduct, in spite of the evolutionist's picture of the eternal and necessary struggle for existence? There is truly, but the fact has not been explained by the theory, nor can it easily be explained.