He thinks that if we followed hard reason--and by 'hard reason'
he obviously means an imitation on our part of the action of natural
selection--we should be led to sweep away all those institutions by
which civilised mankind guards its weaker members. But this, he says,
would be only to deteriorate the "noblest part of our nature." What is
noblest in our nature, then, is not that which natural selection has
favoured or maintained. There is, therefore, implied in his view a
limitation of the ethical significance of the principle of natural
selection. For, when we come to this crucial question of conduct,
it is not allowed to give any criterion of moral validity. More
comprehensive attempts on the same lines as Darwin's have been made
subsequently; and various writers have tried to show how the moral
criterion may be resolved into social efficiency, or how it may be
derived from a problematic future state of the human race on this
earth when the need for struggle has disappeared and all things
go smoothly. The former view may be found in Sir Leslie Stephen's
'Science of Ethics'; the latter is the peculiar property of Mr Herbert
Spencer. Somewhat unwillingly I must for the present leave these
special views without consideration,[2] because I wish to bring out
still more plainly the various attitudes of the evolutionists to
morality, and especially to draw attention to a view very different
from those just mentioned, though not altogether without support in
Darwin, which, as put forward some years ago by the late Professor
Huxley[3], produced no little flutter in scientific dovecots.
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