MAN, THE NEW SYNTHESIS The evolution of moral qualities may be divided into epochs. First, there was the pre-human period, marked by the rise and progress of parental affection, kin-sympathy, courage, self-sub ordination, and other primary virtues. Second, in the early ages of tentative men, hominoid rather than homines, there was a re-definition and re-thrilling of the moral ' fibres under the influence of the new synthesis or mutation—Man. With reason and language and consciousness of history both past and possible, there must have been a re-tuning of the moral nature. Third, there was the period of primitive societies, still small and simple, when social inter-relations began to have their subjective effect, when social claims began to transcend or to thwart those of the family and the individual, and when the social shield be gan to shelter variants who would have had difficulty in surviving in the isolated family. The fourth period is especially marked by the growth of the extra-organismal heritage—the moral tradi tion, the moralising institutions, the morality enregistered in literature and art, and everything in the nature of law. Only in this period did there begin the focussing of moral ideas and the formulation of moral standards. Only now was it possible to have a culture of goodness as a reward in itself. Moral ideals became self-conscious. As social complexities and inter-societary complications increased, a dilemma, previously not more than adumbrated, became poignant,—the dilemma between a social policy, more or less deliberately devised to secure survival, and ' the moral promptings intrinsic in our natural inheritance or extrinsic in our external heritage. Thus the desirable improve ment of the human breed may conflict with our moral sentiments. Contrariwise our strong kin-sympathy may thwart charity organi sation and multiply beggars. Moreover, the momentum of the social organisation into which we are born may baulk the realiza tion of both social and individual ethical ideals. New moral prob lems have evolved with the growth of civilization, and even the individually good man may think too little of the state. Thus we are at present in the early days of an evolving social ethics.
Philosophical critics have exposed the difficulty of giving an account of the evolution of morals in terms of known biological and psychological factors ; and that difficulty must be admitted by all who are not easygoing. There is a risk, however, of exag gerating the difficulty by failing to appreciate the subtlety of the evolutionist position. Thus it is not difficult to make game of the Darwinian theory of the evolution of the virtues, if one ignores such points as the following, (a) that natural selection includes "reproductive" selection, favouring the more fertile variants, of ten the better parents, as well as "lethal" selection, which eliminates the relatively unfit to given conditions; (b) that the struggle for existence, as Darwin emphasized, includes all the endeavours and reactions that organisms make against environing difficulties and limitations, the well-lined nest of the long-tailed tit, as well as the talons of the eagle; (c) that the living creature is not a passive item being sifted in a sieve, but an agent in its own evolution, as James Ward so clearly saw, playing for all it is worth its own hand of hereditary cards; (d) that the indis pensable sifting, which results in the survival of certain variants on account of certain qualities, is in reference to an established system of Nature, often of extraordinary nicety; (e) that a variation not in itself such, in quality or in quantity, that it could be selected by the existing sieves, may be entailed for generations because it is correlated with other variations that have selection-value. There are well-known instances in the realm of organisms of characters which have had a cumulative increase, not because they themselves are of demonstrable utility, but because of a certain "organic momentum," the limit being that they do not prove positively disadvantageous.
In the evolution of morals there has been a continuous sift ing of variations in man's sympathy, affection, courage, and control-power, and the sifting process has changed from crude to subtle natural selection, and from rational to social selection, the big fact being that variations in certain directions tend to wards not survival merely, but progress. For the animal, progress means greater fullness and freedom of life, marked by increased differentiation and integration, and with an associated emancipa tion of the mental aspect. For man, granting health and wealth, progress means approximation to an asymptotic ethical ideal, which includes a richer embodiment of the true, the beautiful and the good. Conduct that is controlled towards the ideal is good conduct. Its strands were spun in the animal, they were woven and transmuted in man, they have been sifted by many modes of selection,—natural and sexual, rational and social. The processes of variation and selection are still continuing, and, since retrogressions are easy, it is man's unending task to criticise his sieves and the ideals which form their mesh. It must be allowed by all that these ideals have been influenced not only by man's intrinsic moral nature and extrinsic moral heritage, but by even subtler factors, such as his philosophy and religion. Their validity and sanctity are not prejudiced by an account of their evolution ; to anyone with imagination their imperativeness is enhanced by a disclosure of their indispensability in the ascent of man.
But those who seek to form a scientific picture of the evolution of morals must give to two considerations more attention than they have hitherto received. The first, already referred to is the necessity of trying to distinguish moral peculiarities that express germinal variations from moral peculiarities that are impressed as nurtural modifications. This is important since the biological facts are, in the writer's judgment, strongly in favour of the hereditary transmission of the former, and against the hereditary transmission of the latter, which may, however, affect the extra organismal or social heritage. Secondly an inborn variation, say in control-power, sympathy, courage, veracity, may be the sub ject of selection; yet it may be that the moral quality which is of tenest selected or eliminated is the degree of susceptibility to the social heritage as expressed in moral customs and moral insti tutions of every sort. Thus it becomes urgent to secure the con tinuance of those factors that have in the past demonstrably bettered the extra-organismal heritage—such homely but supreme influences as the love between man and woman, the happy family, and the social solidarity induced by combination in noble en deavour. A continuance and development of these ameliorative influences, adjusted as need be, must be recognized as the prac tical side of the evolution of morals.