Page:Philosophical Review Volume 14.djvu/233

217 characterize this principle. "An example of subjective selection in animals is the principle of sexual selection on which Darwin laid stress as a factor in development. But it is when subjective selection is guided by intelligent foresight, as it is in man, that its importance is fully shown; for then it becomes able to anticipate the selective process which would otherwise be worked out by nature, and to avoid the method of destruction which the latter entails."

Still a third factor in evolution must, however, be recognized, namely, what Mr. Sorley calls 'Social Selection.' This principle "sifts the results of subjective selection from the point of view not of the individual, but of the system which he has entered. ... By it the individuals who can adapt themselves are adopted and rewarded, while the others are passed by or suppressed. On the individual this is apt to operate with something of the externality and relentlessness of natural selection. And yet the nature of its operation is different; it does not merely exterminate the unfit, it actively selects and promotes the welfare of the fit; for, however imperfect it may be, the methods of the social system reflect the intelligence, and the organized intelligence, of the community." It is unnecessary to follow the author into the details of his close examination of the so-called 'ethics of evolution,' as the argument remains essentially the same as in the first edition of the work, which has long since taken its place in the literature of the subject. All that I have attempted to do on the present occasion is to call attention to those additions and restatements by which Mr. Sorley has so greatly added, in the present edition, to the value of the original work, and to indicate to those who have not yet made its acquaintance the point of view and method of the discussion.

The same qualities of careful and exact thought, of methodical arrangement, and of clear expression are found to characterize the volume entitled Recent Tendencies in Ethics, which consists of three lectures given to a summer meeting of clergy at Cambridge in 1903, and intended for those who, like the audience to which they were delivered, "may desire an account, in short compass and in popular form, of some leading features of the ethical thought of the present day." The popular form of the lectures has the advantage of stimulating the author to a more graphic, and, in the good sense, even rhetorical, style than that adopted, with equally good judgment, in the earlier and larger work. It would be difficult to improve upon the characterization of contemporary ethical thought in the first lecture or the statement of the bearing of the theory of evolution upon ethics in the second.