men, he boldly asserts that no such justification is necessary. Sub-human nature is not a model for human imitation. So far from this, the imitation of the so-called cosmic process is inconsistent with the first principles of ethics. Thus is reasserted that fundamental difference between man and the brutes, which, as we have remarked, evolutionary theory tries to explain, not to explain away. So profound is the difference, according to Huxley, that righteous human conduct may, on the whole, be said to be directly opposed to the ways of action which an indiscriminate imitation of nature would suggest. So far from being identical with the mere struggle for existence, morality imposes upon that struggle conditions which favor the development and selection of types which in a non-moral environment could not survive. Such, in a few words, is the central import of the celebrated lecture, the substantial truth of which is, I suppose, perfectly manifest; though it is to be recalled that Huxley by no means confined himself to this contention, but included in his attack, somewhat indiscriminately, several of the higher forms of evolutionary ethics, which we have yet to examine.
One peculiar variation of the imitational theory is, perhaps, worth a passing notice. According to this view, it is not the past of evolution which we should imitate, but the future. That future will, indeed, come without our assistance, but it is the part of virtue to* hasten its appearing,—not because of any otherwise demonstrable worth that it has in store, but simply because it is the end, or the course, of evolution. Singular theory, requiring for its working out a predictive certainty in the inductions of biology and sociology which those sciences unfortunately do not yet possess! The theory is, as a matter of fact, more often met with as the adversary of straw which the critic of evolutionary ethics sets up to receive his onslaught, than as the sober belief of anyone; and yet it is not without a certain following in contemporary Germany.
The third stage of the discussion is that to which belong the principal English systems of evolutionary ethics,—those of Herbert Spencer and Sir Leslie Stephen, and, in certain aspects, also that of Alexander. It is difficult to define in a few words the
