e. What we call the higher forms are in all cases developments from
simpler and lower forms.

Further, the method of this progress has been described. Herein indeed
lay Darwin's most important achievement. He detected and demonstrated
the operation of a factor hitherto unsuspected. This new factor to
which he drew attention as the chief agent in organic development was
called by him 'natural selection,' The name has a positive sound and
suggests a process of active choice. But Darwin was fully aware that
the process to which he gave this name was a negative and not a
positive operation; and as such it was clearly recognised by him. The
name was, no doubt, chosen simply to bring out the fact that the
same kind of results as those which man produces by conscious and
artificial selection may be arrived at without conscious purpose by
the operation of merely natural forces. Instead of the 'fit' being
directly chosen or encouraged, what happens is simply that the 'unfit'
die out or are exterminated, so that room to live and means of life
are left for the survivors.

What may be meant by this idea of 'fitness'--which meets us in the
famous phrase that the 'survival of the fittest' in the struggle for
life is the goal of evolution--is a question which brings us at once
to the consideration of the ethical significance of the theory. For
it seems to lay claim to give both an explanation of progress and an
interpretation of what constitutes worth in conduct.

II.

ETHICS AND EVOLUTION.

There are two things which are not always kept distinct,--what may be
called the 'evolution of ethics' and the 'ethics of evolution,' The
former might more correctly be called the evolution of morality,--the
account of the way in which moral customs, moral institutions, and
moral ideas have been developed and have come to take their place in
the life of mankind. Clearly these are all features of human life;
and, if the theory of evolution applies to human life, we must expect
it also to have some contribution to make to this portion of man's
development,--to the growth of the customs, institutions, and ideas
which enter into and make up his morality.

But by the 'ethics of evolution' is meant something more than the
'evolution of ethics' or development of morality. It signifies a
theory which turns the facts of evolution to account in determining
the value for man of different kinds of conduct and feeling and idea.
When one speaks