Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/516

498 I do not see how the original assertion can survive after this admission has been made. Practically the last cancels the first. If the ethical process is a part of the process of evolution or cosmic process, then how can the two be put in opposition? Prof. Huxley says:—

"The struggle for existence, which has done such admirable work in cosmic nature, must, it appears [according to the view he opposes], be equally beneficent in the ethical sphere. Yet, if that which I have insisted upon is true; if the cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends; if the imitation of it by man is inconsistent with the first principles of ethics; what becomes of this surprising theory?"—P. 34.

But when we find that the hypothetical statement, "if the cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends," is followed by the positive statement that "the cosmic process" has "a sort of relation to moral ends," we may ask, "what becomes of this surprising" criticism? Obviously, indeed, Prof. Huxley cannot avoid admitting that the ethical process, and, by implication, the ethical man, are products of the cosmic process. For if the ethical man is not a product of the cosmic process, what is he a product of?

The view of which Prof. Huxley admits the truth in note 19 is the view which I have perpetually enunciated: the difference being that instead of relegating it to an obscure note, I have made it a conspicuous component of the text. As far back as 1850, when I did not yet recognize evolution as a process co-extensive with the cosmos, but only as a process exhibited in man and in society, I contended that social progress is a result of "the ethical process," saying that—

"the ultimate man will be one whose private requirements coincide with public ones. He will be that manner of man who, in spontaneously fulfilling his own nature incidentally performs the functions of a social unit; and yet is only enabled so to fulfil his own nature, by all others doing the like."—Social Statics, "General Considerations."

And from that time onwards I have, in various ways, insisted upon this truth. In a chapter of the Principles of Ethics entitled "Altruism versus Egoism," it is contended that from the dawn of life altruism of a kind (parental altruism) has been as essential as egoism; and that in the associated state the function of altruism becomes wider, and the importance of it greater, in proportion as the civilization becomes higher. Moreover, I have said that—