the biological evolutionary theories were first
developed, and furnished the basis for the others. Yet both Hegel and
Comte, not to speak of Schelling, were far more interested in the
intellectual and historical, the ethical and social aspects of the
question. Both Hegel and Comte were, whether rightly or wrongly, rather
contemptuous of the appeal to biology and organic life. Both had the
sense that they used a great figure of speech when they spoke of society
as an organism, and compared the working of institutions to biological
functions. This is indeed the question. It is a question over which
Spencer sets himself lightly. He passes back and forth between organic
evolution and the ethical, economic, and social movements which are
described by the same term, as if we were in possession of a perfectly
safe analogy, or rather as if we were assured of an identical principle.
Much that is already archaic in Spencer's economic and social, his
historical and ethical, not to say his religious, chapters is due to the
influence of this fact. Of his own mind it was true that he had come to
the doctrine of evolution from the physical side. He brought to his
other subjects a more or less developed method of operating with the
conception. He never fully realised how new subjects would alter the
method and transform the conception. Spencerian evolution is an
assertion of the all-sufficiency of natural law. The authority of
conscience is but the experience of law-abiding and dutiful generations
flowing in our veins. The public weal has hold over us, because the
happiness and misery of past ages are inherited by us.

It marked a great departure when Huxley began vigorously to dissent from
these views. According to him evolutionary science has done nothing for
ethics. Men become ethical only as they set themselves against the
principles embodied in the evolutionary process of the world. Evolution
is the struggle for existence. It is preposterous to say that man became
good by succeeding in the struggle for existence. Instead of the old
single movement, as in Spencer, straight from the nebula to the saint,
Huxley has place for suffering. Suffering is most intense in man
precisely under conditions most essential to the evolution of his nobler
powers. The loss of ease or money may be gain in character. The cosmical
process is not only full of pain. It is full of mercilessness and of
wickedness. Good has been evolved, but so has evil. The