[Footnote 3:  The Romanes Lecture, 1893, “Evolution and Ethics.”  In 1894 this was republished, with prolegomena, in vol. ix. of ’Collected Essays,’ with the title, “Evolution and Ethics, and other Essays.”]

Professor Huxley reviewed what he called the cosmic process as it was guided by the law of evolution.  He showed how at each step of that process new results were only attained by enormous waste and pain on the part of those living creatures which were thrust aside as unfit for their surroundings, and he held consequently that the whole cosmic process is of an entirely different character from what we must mean when we use the term ‘moral.’  According to him morality is opposed to the method of evolution, and cannot be based upon the theory of evolution.  It is of independent worth; but Professor Huxley, perhaps wisely, refrained from investigating its justification, while enforcing “the apparent paradox that ethical nature, while born of cosmic nature, is necessarily at enmity with its parent”

“The practice of that which is ethically best—­what we call goodness or virtue—­involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence.  In place of ruthless self-assertion it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help, his fellows; its influence is directed, not so much to the survival of the fittest, as to the fitting of as many as possible to survive.  It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence....  Let us understand once for all that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Evolution and Ethics, pp. 81-83.]

Here, then, is a view very different from the easy optimism of Mr Herbert Spencer.  The cosmic order has nothing to say to the moral order, except that, somehow or other, it has given it birth; the moral order has nothing to say to the cosmic order, except that it is certainly bad.  Morality is occupied in opposing the methods of evolution.

Still another view is possible.  It may be held that the morality of self-restraint and self-sacrifice are opposed—­as Huxley says they are opposed—­to the methods of cosmic evolution; and yet the “gladiatorial theory of existence” may not be repudiated; but morality may be modified to suit the claims of evolution.  This is the position adopted by the philosopher Nietzsche, whose whole thought is permeated by the idea of evolution.  Like Professor Huxley, Nietzsche might say that morality is opposed to the cosmic process.  But by morality he would mean something that is not to be encouraged, but that is to be shed from human life, or at least fundamentally transformed, just because it is in opposition to the laws of cosmic progress.  On the other hand,