Clearly these are all features of human life;
and, if the theory of evolution applies to human life, we must expect
it also to have some contribution to make to this portion of man's
development,--to the growth of the customs, institutions, and ideas
which enter into and make up his morality.
But by the 'ethics of evolution' is meant something more than the
'evolution of ethics' or development of morality. It signifies a
theory which turns the facts of evolution to account in determining
the value for man of different kinds of conduct and feeling and idea.
When one speaks of the ethics of evolution one must be understood to
mean that the evolution theory does something more than trace the
history of things, that it gives us somehow or other a standard or
criterion of moral worth or value. This additional point may be
expressed by the technical distinction between origin and validity.
Clearly there is a very great difference between showing how something
has come to be what it is and assigning to it worth or validity for
the guidance of life or thought It may be that the former enquiry has
some bearing upon the latter; but only confusion will result if the
two problems are not clearly distinguished at the outset,--as they
very seldom are distinguished by writers on the theory of evolution in
its application to ethics.
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