qualities which give success in the struggle between different
individuals, but recommends to all his fellows in the same community
that they should cultivate those altruistic qualities which will lead
to the advantage of society.

The theory of evolution makes no contribution at all to these
questions of worth or validity or moral value which we have been
discussing. All one can get out of it is certain canons for living,
but none for good living. It may draw one's attention to this fact, if
anybody's attention needs to be drawn to it, that existence is prior
to wellbeing; but what the nature of wellbeing is--upon that it throws
no light.

We have been met by the suggestion that we should interpret by means
of the lower or less developed, and again that we should set up a
purely physiological standard. But the suggestion overlooks two
things: first of all, the difficulties in the application of natural
selection itself with its divergent tendencies; and, secondly, the
fact that this process of evolution has itself resulted in the
development of certain higher activities and higher tendencies, and
that there is no good ground for holding that their worth is to be
tested by means of the lower qualities out of which they have grown.

Now a good many evolutionist moralists seem to see this, and
accordingly restrict themselves almost entirely to what we may call
the historical point of view. They show how moral customs and moral
ideas adapted to them have arisen, and how these ideas and customs
have corresponded with the institutions of the time to which they
belonged. Their tendency, accordingly, is to restrict ethics to
the question of origin and history and description, to deprive it