Page:Philosophical Review Volume 19.djvu/437

423 modify the scope or rigor of his proposed project, the politician his measure, if he would survive in the capacity of social reformer or politician.

These commonplaces of attention in the field of analogy are not suggested as marking evidence that a process of natural selection occurs in the sphere of human conduct. It is the negative rather than the positive aspect of the problem that concerns us. If we grant with the evolutional moralist that analogy may warrant the application of this concept to morality, then we may ask: (A) What are the leading objections to such an application, and (B), Why does a thoroughgoing evolutional ethics, seeking guidance from this principle, present ends which are manifestly at cross-purposes with the ideals that emerge from an idealistic conception of nature and of man? It would seem that, but for a latent dualism, evolution and a genuine idealism should yield approximately the same standards. Both are in intent and tendency monistic, though these standards are approached from opposite points of view.

II. As regards the first question, then, (A) we have first to note (1) the general objection that natural selection is a soulless mechanical process, careless of individual welfare and mindful only of the type. In the evolutional process there is no room for the individual qua individual. Personality can have no abiding significance. Nature seeks the preservation of the race, the mere survival of the human species; the individual counts for nothing.

Now whatever the cosmic process may have in store for the individual and species, the foregoing objection does not seem to hold good in the sphere of human evolution. The common assertion that in the organic world natural selection is directed toward the species, and not toward the individual, admits of a real objection. For "if the character in question is to be preserved by survival, it must be of vital importance to the individual, or it has no influence on the race." This seems to hold true of man's conduct also. However true it may be that qualities of the individual—obedience, self-restraint, etc.—which make for