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