Evolution. F. B. Jevons

ideas. Right is right, even though there be brutes in human form; and right was right, even when the ape and tiger ruled in man, and even though they were fine fellows, in their own opinion. Cruelty and selfishness never were right at any time, and never will be. The laws of morality, like the laws of science, are objectively true: they do not vary with the opinions men entertain about them; the earth, for instance, did not move or cease to move round the sun according as men imagined Galileo to be right or wrong, nor has right ceased to be right even when the world has been most depraved.

      A moral judgment, then, like a scientific judgment, is objective, not subjective; it is not the expression of a mere opinion, but the statement of a fact which has an existence independent of man. If now we ask what sort of an existence it has, it is clear that what is and what ought to be have not in all cases the same kind of existence: the thing which is may sometimes also be the thing that ought to be, but often it is not. Now, when the latter is the case, when a thing is felt to be a crying evil, a foul injustice that calls for remedy, in what sense does the justice exist on which we call to drive out the injustice? The thing which ought not to be exists, and is in possession. The thing which ought to be delays its coming. Shall we say, then, that, while that is so, it exists indeed, but exists as an ideal, as something which we know ought to be and are resolved shall be? That it must present itself to some mind or other as an object of desire, and as a possibility capable of fulfilment, is certain. That it does so present itself to man is what we mean when we attribute to him the power of moral judgment and moral action. But when we speak of man's moral judgments as being objectively true, we imply that they exist not merely in his mind, but also elsewhere. But ideals can only exist in a mind; judgments can be pronounced only by a judge. When, therefore, we affirm that in objectivity and validity our moral judgments are on a par with our scientific judgments, and that our knowledge of what ought to be is as real and true as our knowledge of what is, that the existence of ethical nature, with its demands upon our reason, is a fact as indisputable as the existence of cosmic nature, we are implicitly affirming also the existence of a mind, other than human, from whose moral judgments the laws of morality derive their validity; and as those laws are eternal and immutable, as right is right always and from eternity to eternity, so must be the mind in which they are and from which they proceed.

      To say that the ideal is real sounds paradoxical. It seems like saying that to have the idea of a shilling is the same thing as possessing a shilling. That is a patent absurdity, but no one will maintain that it is an absurdity to say that we ought to try to be better than we are. On the contrary, everyone will admit that it is a truth, and a truth of the highest importance, of greater value and greater significance for our highest interests than, say, the law of gravitation, or any statement as to the ways in which matter and motion are redistributed. When the desire to amend our life is strong upon us, when we are most conscious of the heavy difference between actual amendment and amendment in idea alone, then we are most certain of the reality of the moral ideal as a fact, both of immediate consciousness at the moment and of permanent significance for us and for all men. To say that our moral convictions correspond to no real facts is simply to deny to them any validity at all. To say that the facts to which they correspond are real, but are purely subjective, being but moods, and often passing moods, of the individual, is merely to say that our moral convictions are illusions and right-doing only fancy. Nor do we mend matters if we add that all men are more or less subject to these moods, that right and wrong are purely human institutions; for if their value in the individual is naught, their existence in the multitude does but add to ciphers ciphers. On the other hand, if the moral ideal is no figment of man's imagination, if its existence does not come and go with his fitful moral struggles, then its permanent abode, the centre from which it manifests itself, must be in some permanent intelligence at the centre of things.

      The Pessimistic interpretation of evolution suggests another way of reaching the same conclusion. That form of Pessimism represents cosmic nature as indifferent, if not hostile, to ethical nature; the former by its law of the struggle for existence favours the survival of the strongest and the most selfish; the latter with its moral laws strives to suspend the struggle for existence, and to defeat the selfishness which the former seeks to perpetuate and extend. Human evolution is in its essence the struggle of man as a moral being against nature as non-moral or anti-moral; and the curve traced by human evolution is the resultant of the opposition of the two forces—the microcosm, man, and the macrocosm, nature. During the first part of its course the line of human evolution rises, but during the latter part it is doomed to fall; and the curve will be completed when man, having traversed every stage of moral degradation, is merged once more in the brute matter to which originally he owed his being. Against this victory of cosmic nature man, as a moral being, protests and fights. He protests that it is wrong—wrong, not because it brings him more pain than pleasure, for right-doing also may have that result, but wrong without regard to his feelings, so that any impartial spectator who witnessed the struggle would condemn and regret the issue. If this is not so, if the condemnation is the expression merely of human prejudice, then there is nothing in the defeat of ethical nature or in the victory of its enemy, cosmic nature, really to regret; the difference between right and wrong is not an absolute or real distinction, corresponding to real facts, and the victory of cosmic nature, even if it runs counter to man's prejudices, is not thereby shown to be really wrong, though man naturally is under the illusion that it is.

      The coarse and immoral piece of vulgarity which condones an act of wrong-doing on the ground that "it will be all the same a hundred years hence," is, with an extension of time, as applicable to the race generally as to the individual in particular. In a million, or a billion, years hence it will, according to the pessimistic interpretation of evolution, be all the same: matter and motion will alone exist, completely indifferent to right and wrong. What does it matter, then, whether we do right or wrong? Ultimately, it will make no difference: the distinction between right and wrong is not one of permanent value, or based on any lasting difference in things. Nor is it strange that a cause which is based on an illusion should be doomed to defeat. What is strange is that anyone should invite us to renounce happiness for such an unmeaning struggle.

      The only reply to such loose talk is that it does matter, here and now, always and to all time, that right should triumph over wrong. It will not do to say that it matters now, but will not matter hereafter, for, if it is of no importance then, neither is it of any importance now. But if right-doing is the most important thing in the world, more important than happiness, more important to all time even than the perpetual redistribution of matter and motion, to whom is it important? Not exclusively, nor even primarily, to ourselves; for the essence of right-doing is the attempt to put self away and forget it, the yearning to be lifted above personal considerations and thought of self, the conviction that whilst it matters all the world to me, to do the right, the matter does not end with me. The matter is not of merely personal importance to me, nor important simply because I choose to think it so. Its value and significance are apprehended—alas! too rarely—by me, they are not created by me. Its significance and importance are real, not fictitious; that reality is not created by man, it is not a human prejudice, but exists independent of man and what he thinks. To matter and motion, those perpetual manifestations of the Power or Reality which underlies them, nothing can have any meaning or importance: it is only to a mind that things can be significant or important. If, then, the importance of right-doing is real, it is because it really matters to the Power, which underlies all things, that we should do right; and that Power must be of the nature of an intelligence, for it is only a mind which can either apprehend values or assign them. If the microcosm, man, can pass a valid sentence of condemnation upon the macrocosm, nature, it is only because and so far as his moral nature places him in direct communication with the heart of things and gives him knowledge of the will of that Power on which microcosm and macrocosm alike depend for their existence. If the distinction between right and wrong is one by which man can correctly judge between himself and the cosmos, the distinction and the judgment must proceed from a source superior to both. If it is not, then the Pessimistic interpretation of evolution falls to the ground, because it is based on the assumption that its condemnation of cosmic nature is a correct judgment. Not only does Pessimism fall, but the element of truth and reality which Pessimism contains must also be abandoned; if the distinction between right and wrong is not sufficient for the task put upon it by Pessimism, neither is it sufficient for us to build our lives on. In fine, either