[Footnote 1:  Descent of Man, Part I. chap. v. p. 203 (new ed., 1901).]

But when he comes to the case of civilised men he finds a difficulty.  “With savages,” he says, “the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health.  We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment....  The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts....  Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature[1].”  This sympathy, which natural selection cannot preserve or vindicate even in the struggle of communities, is nevertheless recognised by Darwin as having a moral value outside of and above natural selection and the struggle for existence,—­a value of which these have no right to judge.  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.

[Footnote 1:  Descent of Man, pp. 205, 206.]

[Footnote 2:  For a discussion of these views I may be allowed to refer to my’ Ethics of Naturalism,’ chap. viii. (chap. ix. in the new edition).  The same volume contains a more exhaustive examination than is possible in this lecture of the whole subject of evolutionist ethics.]