nificance of "the Theory of Evolution," one feels, as the author must have felt in rewriting it, how greatly the ethical interest of the theory has waned in the interval. The first edition of the Data of Ethics was published in 1879, and, as Professor Albee points out (History of English Utilitarianism, p. 269), "the extreme claims for Evolutional Ethics" made in that work "are considerably diminished before the completion of the Principles of Ethics" (in 1893). Still we must be grateful for the care with which the argument has been revised and brought up to date. The ambiguity of the phrase 'ethics of evolution' is first insisted upon. "When reference is made to the 'ethics of evolution,' no more is sometimes meant—though a great deal more should be meant—than an historical account of the growth of moral ideas and customs, which may provide (as Sir L. Stephen expressed it) 'a new armoury wherewith to encounter certain plausible objections of the so-called Intuitionists.' This, however, would only affect the ethical psychology of an opposed school. The profounder question still remains, What bearing has the theory of evolution, or its historical psychology and sociology, on the nature of the ethical end, or on the standard for distinguishing right and wrong in conduct? The answer to this question would be the 'reconstruction' and 'deeper change' which Stephen held to be necessary. It is the ambiguity of the subject—or rather its two-fold range—which has made the application of evolution to ethics look so obvious, and made a discussion of the easier question frequently do duty for a solution of the more difficult."
Another important distinction, which, according to the author, is often overlooked, is the distinction between natural and purposive selection. "Each step in development involves a modification which has to be accounted for not by natural selection, but by laws of variation. And in human life varieties of conduct and of social forms are to a large extent the result of known causes: they are due to intelligent purpose, in which the end is foreseen and means are deliberately adapted to it. The end which nature might blindly achieve by exterminating unfit varieties is aimed at directly, and brought about—when intelligent purpose is most successful—without any help from the operation of natural selection. In the realm of intelligence natural selection is replaced by puposive." It is true that this purpo- sive factor emerges gradually, but this is "no ground whatever for the assumption that it can be either reduced to, or accounted for by non-purposive forces." In the new section devoted to the subject, Mr. Sorley adopts Dr. Ward's term 'Subjective Selection' to
