Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/99

Rh to live well, it must first be possible to live, is a question we need not at present discuss. I mention the matter at all only because the present volume professes to furnish us with a biological deduction of justice. We are told that, inasmuch as in the evolution of life animals have prospered according to their structural adaptation to the conditions of existence, the supreme law of morality, if we concede the welfare of the species to be the ultimate end, is "that each individual ought to receive the benefits and the evils of his own nature and consequent conduct"; and that such an entail of advantages and disadvantages is what is meant by Justice, or what constitutes at least the "positive element" in Justice (p. 17; cf. pp. 8, 9, 15, 45, 130, 150, 260). Both these fundamental positions seem to me untenable.

As to the first, the moralization of natural selection, I can only observe that it is altogether illogical to turn a natural fact that is into a moral law that ought to be. We may hope that in some ultimate scheme, though we understand it not, whatever is is right; and that even such a ruthless process as the evolution of animal life by extinction of the less favored forms is not without rational significance. But we cannot, without a violation of the norms of reason and an outrage of the sentiments of the heart, transform the animal's struggle with its environment into the supreme ideal of human life. Nor does this model commend itself by the additional qualification of reciprocal non-interference with one another's lives. The receipt of the natural consequences of an individual's nature, active or quiescent, — wherein Mr. Spencer discovers the essence of Justice, — seems to me neither just nor unjust, neither right nor wrong, neither moral nor immoral. No doubt this process has made the later generations of animals stronger, more cunning, and better adapted to the environment than the earlier generations. And were we aiming at a similar improvement in the breed of man, we might perhaps not be able to do better than let the process of natural selection go on undisturbed. In that case we should have no charities for the poor, no hospitals for the sick, no protection for the weak and helpless. If the goal is the superiority of future generations, let the least favored varieties be eliminated. But there is no reason or excuse for such a consequence when it is recognized that the conception of human welfare as ethical end implies, first of all, the well-being of existing humanity, each member of which is to be treated as an end in himself, never as a mere means to other ends, and then, secondarily, the welfare of future humanity, — but only in so far as is compatible with the just claims of every living child of man. Mr. Spencer's moralization of natural selection is not demanded by an ethical system which places the supreme end in the welfare of the species, nor is it in itself inherently defensible. To the contention that the biological law "possesses the highest possible