to say, until
we had examined it more closely. At present it seems to me more like
a cloud, which may or may not conceal the goddess Truth. But the
question I really want to ask is, What particular advantage Wilson
gets from the biological method? For the conclusion itself, I suppose,
might have been reached, and commonly is, without any recourse to the
aid of natural science."

"No doubt," he said, "but my contention is, that it is only by the
scientific method that you get proof. You, for example, may assert
that you believe the social virtues ought to prevail over individual
passions; but if your position were challenged, I don't see how you
would defend it. Whereas I can simply point to the whole evolution of
Nature as tending towards the Good I advocate; and can say:--if you
resist that tendency you are resisting Nature herself!"

"But isn't it rather odd," said Ellis, "that we should be able to
resist Nature?"

"Not at all," he replied, "for our very resistance is part of the
plan; it's the lower stage persisting into the higher, but destined
sooner or later to be absorbed."

"I see," I said, "and the keynote of your position is, as you said at
the beginning, that Good is simply what Nature wants. So that, instead
of looking within to find our criterion, we ought really to look
without, to discover, if we can, the tendency of Nature and to
acquiesce in that as the goal of our aspiration."

"Precisely," he replied, "that is the position."

"Well," I said, "it is plausible enough; but the plausibility, I am
inclined to think, comes from the fact that you have been able to make
out, more or less, that the tendency of Nature is in the direction
which, on the whole, we prefer."

"How do you mean?"

"Well," I said, "supposing your biological researches had led you to
just the opposite conclusion, that the tendency of Nature was not from
the cell to the animal, and from the individual to society, but in
precisely the reverse direction, so that the end of all things was a
resolution into the primitive elements--do you think you would have
been as ready to assert that it is the goal of Nature that must
determine our ideal of Good?"

"But why consider such a hypothetical case?"

"I am not so sure," I replied, "that it is more hypothetical than
the other. At any rate it is a hypothesis adopted by one of your
authorities. Mr. Herbert Spencer, you will remember, conceives
the process of Nature to be one, not, as