To say that
intelligence should take nature as its guide is to ask civilised man
to put off both his civilisation and his manhood.
The course of evolution may describe the working of different
principles; but it cannot of itself supply a test of their value. How
then is such a test to be got? Can Metaphysics help us? I have pointed
out that the evolutionist ethics is relative--implying always a
relation between organism and environment--but this relativity is
qualified by its objective character. It does do something for morals:
it brings man's conduct into relation with the world as a whole.
No doubt the environment which more immediately surrounds man is a
succession of changing phenomena, so that although the basis we get is
objective, nevertheless it is unable to give us a permanent standard
of reference. At the same time we may trace in this theory some
advance on the older types of ethical thinking spoken of in last
lecture. Subjectivity adhered even to the Utilitarian type of thought:
for what can be more subjective than the pleasant feeling upon
which morality is made by it to depend? There was also a certain
subjectivity attaching to the Intuitional type of thought, because the
Intuitionists simply referred their judgments to conscience, the law
in man, and did not connect conscience with a wider or more objective
view of the universe.
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