n {100} race would eventually
be wiped out of existence by the new-comers if the expansion of these
were left unmolested,--these present sages would have two courses open
to them, either perfectly in harmony with the evolutionary test:
Strangle the new race now, and ours survives; help the new race, and it
survives. In both cases the action is right as measured by the
evolutionary standard,--it is action for the winning side.

Thus the evolutionist foundation of ethics is purely objective only to
the herd of nullities whose votes count for zero in the march of
events. But for others, leaders of opinion or potentates, and in
general those to whose actions position or genius gives a far-reaching
import, and to the rest of us, each in his measure,--whenever we
espouse a cause we contribute to the determination of the evolutionary
standard of right. The truly wise disciple of this school will then
admit faith as an ultimate ethical factor. Any philosophy which makes
such questions as, What is the ideal type of humanity? What shall be
reckoned virtues? What conduct is good? depend on the question, What
is going to succeed?--must needs fall back on personal belief as one of
the ultimate conditions of the truth. For again and again success
depends on energy of act; energy again depends on faith that we shall
not fail; and that faith in turn on the faith that we are right,--which
faith thus verifies itself.

Take as an example the question of optimism or pessimism, which makes
so much noise just now in Germany. Every human being must sometime
decide for himself whether life is worth living. Suppose that in
looking at the world and seeing how full it is of misery, of old age,
of wickedness and {101} pain, and how unsafe is his own future, he
yields to the pessimistic conclusion, cultivates disgust and dread,
ceases striving, and finally commits suicide. He thus adds to the mass
_M_ of mundane phenomena, independent of his subjectivity, the
subjective complement _x_, which makes of the whole an utterly black
picture illumined by no gleam of good. Pessimism completed, verified
by his moral reaction and the deed in which this ends, is true beyond a
doubt. _M_ + _x_ expresses a state of things totally bad. The man's
belief supplied all that was lacking to make it so, and now that it is
made so the belief was right.

But now suppose that with the same evil facts _M_, the man's reaction
_x_ is exactly reversed; suppose