NATURE AND THE PHILOSOPHERS But besides the evolution of morals, there arises the question of the ethics of evolution. If man is the present climax of a long process of organic evolution, it is natural to ask whether there is in the evolving system of animate Nature any guidance for his conduct, or any confirmation of his ideals. There has been much difference of opinion on this subject. Thus in a famous essay John Stuart Mill (1874) arraigned Nature for "reckless ness," "cruelty," and indiscriminate frustration of man's efforts. To follow Nature, he said, would be "irrational" (Nature being such a wasteful bungler) and "immoral," for "the course of natural phenomena is replete with everything which, when com mitted by human beings, is most worthy of abhorrence." Some what similar was the indictment of Nature in William James's essay, "Is Life worth living?" but his Manichaeism went even deeper. He arraigned Nature for "hideousness," "cruelty," and meaningless weather. "Visible nature is all plasticity and in difference—a moral multiverse, as one might call it, and not a moral universe. To such a harlot we owe no allegiance ; with her as a whole we can establish no moral communion." In the pro nouncements by these two philosophers there is no appreciation of the actual advancement of life which has been accomplished in organic evolution, no appreciation of the ubiquitous beauty and the almost universal healthfulness, no mention of the parental care, the mutual aid, the kin-sympathy that are so common, no discernment of the rewards of survival and success that have been given to the self-subordinating as generously as to the self assertive. The fact is that the pictures of Nature drawn by John Stuart Mill and William James are out of perspective and off colour. They do not show a sufficiently intimate acquaintance with Nature as it actually is.
But this cannot be said of Huxley whose famous lecture on "Evolution and Ethics" pictures animate Nature as too much like a vast gladiatorial show, a Hobbesian warfare of each against all, a dismal cockpit, an inexorable struggle for existence, the result of which is merely the survival of the most suitable, not of the best in any sense. "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 combat ing it." It must be granted that Huxley was exposing the error that the survival of the fittest need mean more than the survival of those organisms that are best suited to the particular condi tions of their life. The tapeworm is "fit" as well as the golden eagle which it inhabits; and the process of evolution may be retrogressive as well as progressive. Yet, on the whole, we sub mit, the process of organic evolution had been an integrative advance. It must be granted also that Huxley was making the point that animal life is not in the strict sense ethical, which every clear thinker allows. Yet there is one-sidedness in Huxley's picture, for it is not made clear that "the struggle for existence" is, as Darwin said, a formula covering all the answers-back that organisms make to environing difficulties and limitations, that it includes experiments in co-operation as well as in competition, in parental care as well as in predatory devices, in self-subordina tion as well as in self-assertion.
• But turning from these arraignments we would advance a positive thesis that in the realm of organisms there are great evolutionary movements which correspond in their general trend with some of the best of those expressed in man's concept of progress. Living Nature is all for health; apart from parasites there is practically no disease in wild nature. Beauty is Nature's hall-mark of harmonious vigorous life;' ugliness her stigma of dishonour, hardly seen except in those organisms that adopt the parasite's drifting life of ease. Even among animals there is a trend that makes against dull stupidity, so fatal to the giant saurians, and puts a premium on brains. Finally there is survival value among animals in other-regarding as well as in self-regard ing endeavours. Good parents, good lovers, good kin do by no means lose their reward. Thus we deliberately advance the thesis that man's pursuit of the beautiful, the true, and the good, though transcending all biology, has its adumbrations in animate nature.
See ETHICS ; EVOLUTION ; ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR ; ANIMAL SO CIOLOGY.