Kant really came to his
ethics by the way of evolution, though he afterwards disavowed it.
Similarly the same line of thought may be traced in Hegel though it has
been disguised in the form of speculative dialectics. ("Herrschaft und
Knechtschaft", "Phanomenologie des Geistes", IV. A., Leiden, 1907.) And
in Schopenhauer's theory of the blind will to live and its abrogation by
the ethical feeling, which is founded on universal sympathy, we have a
more individualistic form of the same idea.

It was, then, not entirely a foreign point of view which Darwin
introduced into ethical thought, even if we take no account of the
poetical character of the word "struggle" and of the more direct
adaptation, through the use and non-use of power, which Darwin also
emphasised. In "The Descent of Man" he has devoted a special chapter
("The Descent of Man", Vol. I. Ch. iii.) to a discussion of the origin
of the ethical consciousness. The characteristic expression of this
consciousness he found, just as Kant did, in the idea of "ought"; it was
the origin of this new idea which should be explained. His hypothesis
was that the ethical "ought" has its origin in the social and parental
instincts, which, as well as other instincts (e.g. the instinct of
self-preservation), lie deeper than pleasure and pain. In many species,
not least in the human species, these instincts are fostered by natural
selection; and when the powers of memory and comparison are developed,
so that single acts can be valued according to the claims of the deep
social instinct, then consciousness of duty and remorse are possible.
Blind instinct has developed to conscious ethical will.

As already stated, Darwin, as a moral philosopher belongs to the school
that was founded by Shaftesbury, and was afterwards represented by
Hutcheson, Hume, Adam Smith, Comte and Spencer. His merit is, first,
that he has given this tendency of thought a biological foundation, and
that he has stamped on it a doughty character in showing that ethical
ideas and sentiments, rightly conceived, are forces which are at work in
the struggle for life.

There are still many questions to solve. Not only does the ethical
development within the human species contain features still unexplained
(The works of Westermarck and Hobhouse throw new light on many of these
features.); but we are confronted by the great problem whether after all
a genetic historical theory can be of decisive importance here. To
e