Page:Philosophical Review Volume 14.djvu/594

578 are still engaging the attention of important thinkers; but the ethical interest seems greatly to have diminished. In the first place, the all-pervading spirit of naturalism has somewhat disaccustomed us to theologizing in ethics; and, in the second place, we are disposed, for scientific purposes, to accept ethical phenomena, the manifold experiences of the moral life, as data not less independently secure and available than the observations of physical science. Moreover, we are averse to the erection of a metaphysics upon the basis of certain aspects of experience, and its subsequent extension, unchanged, over the whole universe of experience. In a word, whatever differences may continue to exist as to the metaphysical presuppositions of ethics, the spirit of the time will not permit suppression of the ethical presuppositions of metaphysics.

The opposition between evolutionism and the doctrines of freedom and immortality has naturally been more direct, being founded, for the most part, upon the wide-spread belief that the evolutionary descent of man means the leveling of him with the brutes. As a popular writer has expressed it: "The revolutionary influence of evolution has been felt most keenly and profoundly in the sphere of ethics, because it cut away a distinction between man and the animals that had seemed fundamental to previous moral philosophy." As we now recognize, the supposition had not sufficient warrant. No distinction had been cut away. Man is man and brute is brute, before and after the revolution. There is no incompatibility between essential change and causal continuity. It is true that we are prone to construe any continuous change in quantitative rather than in qualitative terms. We are natural preformationists. We view development as a literal growth, an increase in dimensions and intensity; but this pictorial way of thinking has no ultimate logical warrant. Evolution obliterates no specific distinction between its particular terms.

It need not be denied that evolutionary writers have occasionally underestimated the present gap between man and the lower animals; but this has less often meant the degrading of man than the exalting of the brute, and the underlying motive has lain