RELIGION AND MORALin' 1.51
rules of a certain society, and their preservation by means of the axe or the scaffold (to which Mr. Huxley alludes as to instruments of morality), will not only not be the maintenance, but will be the infringement of morality. And, on the contrary, every infring^ement of the existing order — such as were not only the in- fringements committed by Jesus and his disciples of the regulations of a Roman province, but the in- fringements of present-day regulations by one who should refuse to take part in legal proceedings, in military service, in the payment of taxes levied for warlike preparations — will not only not be an infringe- ment of morality, but will be an inevitable condition of the manifestation of morality.
Every cannibal who perceives that he shouhl not eat his fellow-men, and who acts accordingly, infringes the order of his society. And, therefore, though action infringing the order of any society viay be immoral, every truly moral action which pushes forward the limits of morality will always be sure to be an infringe- ment of the order of society. If, therefore, a law has appeared in society in accord with which people sacri- fice their personal advantages for the preservation of the integrity of tlieir group — that law is not the ethical law, but, on the contrary, will generally be a law con- trary to all ethics — that same law of tlie struggle for existence, only in a hidden, latent form. It is the same struggle for existence, but carried over from the individual to a group of individuals. It is not the cessation of the fight, but only a backward swinging of the arm, to strike a harder blow.
If the law of the struggle for existence and the sur- vival of the fittest is the eternal law of all life (and it cannot but be admitted to be so when we regard man as an animal) — then no tangled discussions about social progress and an ethical law supposed to flow from it, or to spring up from no one knows where, just when we happen to need it (like a deus ex machina), can disturb that law.
If social progress, as Mr. Huxley assures us, collects
