The recognition of the ultimate tendencies of evolution suggests two further enquiries, one as to the personal relation with the far-off result, and one as to the origin of such a definite progress.

Perhaps the consideration of the former question is bound up in the latter. Nevertheless, within the scope of the former more limited enquiry, the Comtists are content to rest. For them the narrow limits of history and its immediate outlook are sufficient. What is actually recorded of humanity, and what is actually revealed in it, together with the indications of its possibilities, suffice for the creed of the Comtist. The Positivist produced by Evolution worships his Cause under the name of humanity, and works towards Mr. Spencer's evolutionist ideal. He seeks no justification in philosophy. The product of Evolution—he acts from inward impulse and requires no authority. He has none to appeal to in the inculcation of his worship, but the natural response to be found in the hearts of those who occupy the same intellectual and sympathetic position. But this is after all only a partial grasp of the fundamental problem of history. It is an abandonment, temporary or otherwise, of the intellectual problem, although it is a recognition of the onward sweep of humanitarian Evolution. The history and the tendencies are alike sought to be explained by the philosophy of the Evolutionist. What, then, is the position of the Evolutionist in regard to the problem of religion, and what practical bearing has it upon Ethics or moral obligation?

The answer to these questions depends upon what is meant by the theory of Evolution. If by Evolution is meant a complete system of explanations by which all the events comprised in all departments of human knowledge, stretching throughout the whole of history recorded and surmised, are intelligibly accounted for as the results of the interrelation of primordial factors, of which we have a clear apprehension, insomuch that the logical order becomes a picture of the historical order, then our estimate of Evolution depends upon our estimate of the original factors. If they are held to be some seventy in number, and to be those elements of which a full account is given in chemistry, and to be subject to general laws, such as those described in works on physics, then our regard for Evolution must be one due to the reverence we possess for chemistry, electricity, heat, gravitation, and the like, and our conduct must be made to conform—if we wish to coincide with the eventual tendencies of evolution—with what we judge to be the ultimate tendencies of the evolution of these factors, namely, their ultimate equilibration in universal quiescence. Life, according to this view, is an interruption of the process, and a contradiction of cosmical intention.

This view of evolution is not saved by the theory that behind these chemical affinities and physical relations there is an unknowable power of which they are but the manifestations: for the power is not unknowable if its manifestations are limited to these known manifestations; and if they are not so limited, but operate in other ways with new factors, not comprised in our estimate of them, then our explanatory system is at fault, and has to be abandoned or amended. The recognition of an unknowable power behind chemistry and physics, yet limited by the laws of chemistry and physics, is equal only to our estimate of chemistry and physics. We could but address it as Oh my Lord Chemistry! Oh my Lord Physics!

But we have shown in our previous criticisms that this view of evolution, as dealing with purely physical factors, is inadequate to explain the cosmical histories. We have criticised adversely Mr. Spencer's attempts so to explain biological development; and we have indicated the necessity for supposing that other superior factors are present in biological evolution. We do not know that Mr. Spencer disputes it—his work is too vague and inconsistent to enable us to say precisely what he does and what he does not teach. But the admission of additional factors does not destroy the theory of evolution. Darwin and Spencer and the modern school have established, beyond dispute, the fact of orderly development in the cosmos. We are forced, therefore, to admit both evolution and the presence in it, so far as Biology is concerned, and probably also as regards all the changes anterior to the beginnings of life, of a factor over and above the chemical and physical factors. The nature of this factor we do not know, nor do we know how, as having an orderly relation to chemical and physical events, its law is to be expressed in such a manner as to enable us to understand how organisms arose and were developed. Here, indeed, we can recognise a power, and an inscrutable one: but inasmuch as it is inscrutable it spoils our philosophy—our systems of explanations—and laughs at our formulas.

But after all, if we succeed in establishing purposive actions as incidents in a process of equilibration, what have we gained? We have gained a scientific explanation of all purposive actions as well as of all actions of organisms in general. They all stand upon the same footing—that is to say they are all equally explicable as parts of the universal process. They are all equally equilibrations, and so justified in their order of occurrence. They rank alike as incidents in a line of causation explicable by the law of equilibration.

Apparently all that is, is right. Equilibration does not recognise any distinction as to the quality of actions. This distinction can be explained by equilibration, but cannot be justified by it as a law for future conduct, any more than any other incident of the course of equilibration. If certain laws of living become established, then moving equilibria capable of recognising this fact must act accordingly—they must adapt themselves to the environment: but this does not prevent the organism from adapting the environment to itself, if it can, by changing it or overcoming it—this is merely a matter of equilibration. The law of Biology will allow it to cope with an adverse environment in many ways, namely, by conformity, by escape so as to preserve its individuality, and by altering or overcoming the environment. If the forces of the environment be powerful and omnipresent, then conformity is the only resource. It is only a matter of superiority of force, and the resulting conformity is merely a matter of equilibration. It is not that equilibration lends any special sanctity or quality to certain actions. Social pressure coerces individual pressure—the mutual coercion of society is equilibration—the result of this equilibration, whatever it is, is a variable Ethics. The recognition of great duties and great faults, the facts of moral approbation and condemnation, the phenomena of a private and public conscience are all explicable as equilibrations: but since whatever is, is an equilibration, it is not from the laws of equilibration that any established moral distinction or obligation can be justified for guidance for a single day in advance. There is no universality, either in place or time in Ethics thus viewed. The justification of Ethics from the evolution point of view must be sought on other grounds than in that of a cosmical equilibration.

It is difficult to say what support is rendered to practical Ethics by the theory of Evolution. According to it, Ethics is a history and a prediction; but failing the existence in any individual (as the result of a growth) of the moral sense for which Evolution professes to account, the prediction only applies to future generations; and it is difficult to see that practical Ethics has for such a person any intrinsic authority. And even if the moral sense, and social pressure (which are respectively the intrinsic and the extrinsic authority, for practical Ethics) are sufficient of themselves to enforce moral conduct, then the understanding of how they both came to possess such a power of command, lends them no additional authority, but rather tends, at first sight, to detract from their sacred prestige. The confidence of the philosopher is however soon restored, when he considers that despite the failure of his theory to intellectually establish moral enforcements, nevertheless, the great forces which have produced both the intrinsic and the extrinsic ethical authorities are still at work, and must more and more prevail. If these are natural growths the movement in the hearts of men, and in societarian organization, will ever prevail over and above all reasoning about them. Individual opposition and restiveness will be levelled before the might of the advance. The individual must obey or perish; indeed he must himself change and become part of the coercive power.

Thus it will be found that the apprehension which Mr. Spencer expresses in his preface, as to the loss of a controlling agency in the decay and death of an older regulative system is not met by the establishment of a new controlling agency which takes the place of the discarded authority, but may be met by the fact disclosed in evolution, that whatever authority men may recognise, nay, even if they do not recognise any, it is all the same—they are part and parcel of an onward growth against which it is useless to rebel. The moral authority is the conviction of the inevitable. Thus evolution dispels the fear of a moral anarchy by showing the necessity for the existence of present and future moral order, ensured alike by extrinsic social organization, and by a no less certain prevalence of intrinsic motives. Thus, though evolution lends but little additional theoretical force to moral argument, it shows forth the power of natural ethical authority, and declares with convincing efficacy, "magna est veritas et prÆvalebit."

The moral imperative is found to be firstly extrinsic in social pressure, and secondly intrinsic in altruistic sympathy. These are the only authorities competent to say: "Thus shalt thou do, and thus shalt thou not do." Evolution establishes no absolute morality. It is always relative to the surroundings, and it differs according to the stage of civilization. The more nearly the conduct approaches the relatively perfect the more truly ideal is it. The imagined ideal is not so perfect as the relatively perfect. According as a necessity is universal, so is the degree of moral enforcement which accompanies it, and the degree of accord in the recognition of its imperativeness. The sanctity of life, the condemnation of these who infringe it, the commendation of those who promote it are of first eminence. Liberty, Property, and other essentials receive little less recognition; and so on by degrees down to the small details of everyday life. The kind of moral imperative is the same throughout, the degree of enforcement differing according to the varying importance of the actions.

As this point very properly comes in the Evolutionist's view of religion. We take, as our text on this subject, the speech by Professor Fiske at the Spencer banquet held in New York, November 9th, 1882, and since published in the form of a tractette.[15]

Professor Fiske here pursues Mr. Spencer's faulty plan of generalising all religions, and assuming the common or fundamental content as a true finding, besides holding that the fundamental truths of science are identical with this final deliverance of religion. It is not that Professor Fiske's argument is bad, but that it is badly put. If we confine ourselves to the scientific view, and say that the universe manifests an orderly development; that it is probably altogether the result of the relations of primordial factors; but that of these we can form no adequate conception although, nevertheless, they undoubtedly contained something of the elements of a subjective nature—then we do not transgress the scientific view. Neither do we so transgress when, by inductions from the history of man, we assert that the law of development of the subjective is towards altruistic sympathy, quantitative increase of life, and social harmony or equilibration. Mr. Matthew Arnold's recognition of "an eternal power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness" is as near an approach to the truth as we can get. Mr. Spencer's formula should be "an unknowable power, not ourselves, that makes towards equilibrium." The question, thereupon arises, Is the subjective a factor in a process of equilibration, and is righteousness subjective equilibration? The question also arises in the latter case, Is the "makes for" or "makes towards" a teleological aiming at an end, or a process determined completely by antecedent factors of which it is but the outcome?

It is difficult to imagine under a system of evolution, even if an universal subjective factor be admitted, the operation of a teleological activity as ordinarily understood. Nevertheless, we find a teleological faculty evolved in man. And even if we accept Mr. Matthew Arnold's description, the question arises, Has the eternal power a conscious intention of making towards righteousness from the first or from any time? Or is it implicit in the original relations of the subjective to the chemical and physical that it makes through Biology towards righteousness—is righteousness merely another expression for a completed biological law involved in the original relations of atoms with an omnipresent subjective and relative factor?

And again, what, scientifically viewed, is our personal relation to that inscrutable power which makes for righteousness? Here comes in the ethical problem as affected by the religious, and both as affected by our views of evolution. Professor Fiske says of the propositions recognised by all religions "that men ought to do certain things and ought to refrain from doing certain other things; and that the reason why some things are wrong to do and other things are right to do, is in some mysterious but very real way connected with the existence and nature of this divine Power."

The fact that personal responsibility to the inscrutable Power belongs to the essence of all religions is one thing, and the establishment of it as a scientific truth is another. The fact of its existence and of its universality is a presumption in its favour, but is not more than a presumption. What has science to say to it? With this point Professor Fiske next deals. He says that science, after all its searchings, finds, in its ultimate enquiries, not only inexplicable laws whose effects it can calculate though the laws themselves remain unexplained, but also long processes which are not explicable by the known laws, and which will probably remain for ever inexplicable. If he does not say so in those words, we presume that must be what he means: for if he only means that all cosmical histories are explicable by known laws, these laws being themselves inexplicable, the inscrutable or Divine Power is only antecedent to cosmical histories, and is not present in them, nor does it affect the future. Nevertheless, what Professor Fiske has to say of the results of scientific enquiry does not amount to much. "The doctrine of evolution asserts, as the widest and deepest truth which the study of nature can disclose to us, that there exists a power to which no limit in time or space is conceivable, and that all the phenomena of the universe, whether they be what we call material or what we call spiritual phenomena, are manifestations of this infinite and eternal Power."

But this scientific truth does not in its mere enunciation bear upon the question as to our ethical relationship to the Unknown Power. It is only when we study its spiritual or subjective manifestation as an orderly development that we can recognise a power to which we owe a moral obligation. The scientific evidence of moral obligation to the inscrutable power rests, not upon the recognition of the power of which the cosmos is a manifestation, nor upon the fact of its inscrutability, but upon the knowledge of the subjective factor, its manifested history, and the inductions to be drawn from a study of that history in the laws of the working of altruistic sympathy, of quantitative life, and of the harmony of life as already set forth. Professor Fiske's conclusion is a good statement of this scientific establishment of personal responsibility to the divine power, and of religion as the crown and sanction of Ethics.

"Now, science began to return a decisively affirmative answer to such questions as these when it began, with Mr. Spencer, to explain moral beliefs and moral sentiments as products of evolution. For clearly, when you say of a moral belief or a moral sentiment that it is a product of evolution, you imply that it is something which the universe through untold ages has been labouring to bring forth, and you ascribe to it a value proportionate to the enormous effort that it has cost to produce it. Still more, when with Mr. Spencer we study the principles of right living as part and parcel of the whole doctrine of the development of life upon the earth; when we see that, in an ultimate analysis, that is right which tends to enhance fulness of life, and that is wrong which tends to detract from fulness of life—we then see that the distinction between right and wrong is rooted in the deepest foundations of the universe; we see that the very same forces, subtle, exquisite, and profound, which brought upon the scene the primal germs of life and caused them to unfold, which through countless ages of struggle and death have cherished the life that could live more perfectly, and destroyed the life that could only live less perfectly, and humanity, with all its hopes, and fears, and aspirations, has come into being as the crown of all this stupendous work—we see that these very same subtle and exquisite forces have wrought into the very fibres of the universe those principles of right living which it is man's highest function to put into practice. The theoretical sanction thus given to right living is incomparably the most powerful that has ever been assigned in any philosophy of Ethics. Human responsibility is made more strict and solemn than ever, when the eternal power that lives in every event of the universe is thus seen to be in the deepest possible sense the author of the moral law that should guide our lives, and in obedience to which lies our only guarantee of the happiness which is incorruptible—which neither inevitable misfortune nor unmerited obloquy can ever take away."

This appears to us the best statement yet made of the logical results of the enquiry into Evolution when pursued to its furthest point. Some enquirers halt at the materialistic point, but an irresistible logic leads the honest and open-minded enquirer beyond this stage of thought, and he finds in the recognition of the existence of the subjective, and in the history of its development, a law of spiritual life. He finds a law of relation in subjective individuals which induces the establishment of a quantitative life in the increase of the number of correspondences with the external world both in Time and Space, and, which induces also the establishment of altruistic feeling—a feeling that expands to a greater or less comprehension of the great life of the subjective throughout the cosmical history; and in this recognition he finds also a sense of personal responsibility towards a Power which demands from him a surrender, so that he shall work towards its great ideal, and find his happiness therein. What more there may be in natural religion is beyond the scope of our present volume, though we hope at same future time to treat of this important subject. Our present view is limited to the consideration of Ethics, and how that science is affected by the recent large generalisations of Biological history. Certain definite conclusions of a religious character have come forward as the result of our studies, and since these have an ethical import, it is necessary to refer to them in this place.

Nevertheless the study of Evolution assists Ethics, although it can bring no argument to bear upon those who possess little moral aspiration, and can add nothing to the forcefulness of social pressure. Its point d'appui is in the existence in most men of the moral aspirations. Through them it will work upon individuals of their environment, and upon the teachers and legislators who form and guide society. To them is disclosed the fact that their aspirations coincide with the tendencies of nature. They find that they are going with the stream, are in fact part of the historic stream itself. They recognise in society three movements. The first is the growth of altruism or sympathy. The second is the enlargement of quantititive life. The third is the approach towards a harmony or equilibration of life. The recognition of these truths imparts a deeper faith in moral progress, and gives a greater breadth of view, and a more intelligent and charitable interpretation of human action. Philosophers, teachers, and statesmen, understanding the movements of society from age to age, and discerning the goal to which it inevitably works, can read more intelligently its primary phases, and assist more skilfully in its onward movement. The more extended recognition of the social aim throughout society will guide and increase social pressure in a corresponding direction, not only in the proper application of social rewards and penalties, but in the ethical inculcations, and eventually in the hereditarily established intrinsic motives.

Nor will prophets, the ripest fruit of evolution, be wanting in the future. Ages produce not only the working results but the religious voices. There are always men who give utterance to the thought and to the aspirations of their time. Standing in the fore-front of the advancing race, they face the mysterious darkness of the future illumined but by the lights drawn from the Power working through the subjective history.