-itself, of
merit as divorced from the effect of action on others, the abstract
idea of goodness.

The old philosopher, turning from this new conception to the Cosmos,
found that incompatible with goodness. Suffering and sorrow, sunshine
and rain, were distributed independently of merit. With Greek and
Semite and Indian the conscience of man revolted against the moral
indifference of nature. Instead of bringing in a verdict of guilty,
they attempted reconciliation in various ways. Indian speculation
invented or elaborated the theory of transmigration, in which the
Karma or soul-character passed from individual to individual, the
algebraic sums of happiness in the whole chain being proportional to
merit. The Stoics were metaphysicians and imagined an immanent,
omnipotent, and infinitely beneficent First Cause. Evil was
incompatible with this, and so they held, against experience, that
either it did not exist, or that it was inflicted for our benefit or
due to our fault. In one fashion or another, all the great systems of
thought had recognised the antagonism and had attempted some
explanation of it. Huxley's view was that the modern world with its
new philosophy was only retreading the toil-worn paths of the old.
Scientific optimism was being replaced by a frank pessimism. Cosmic
evolution might be accountable for both good and evil, but knowledge
of it provided no better reason for choice of the good than did
earlier speculation. The cosmic process was not only non-moral but
immoral; goodness did not lead to success in it, and laws and moral
precepts could only be addressed to the curbing of it.

In a sense these conclusions of Huxley seemed to lead to absolute
pessimism, but he offered some mitigating considerations. Society
remains subject to the cosmic process, but the less as civilisation
advances and ethical man is the more ready to combat it. The history
of civilisation shows that we have some hope of this, for "when
physiology, psychology, ethics, and political science, now befogged by
crude anticipations and futile analogies, have emerged from their
childhood, they may work as much change on human affairs as the
earlier-ripened physical sciences wrought on material progress." And
so, remembering that the evil cosmic nature in us has the foothold of
millions of years, and never hoping to abandon sorrow and pain, we may
yet, in the manhood of our race, accept our destiny, and, with clear
and steady eyes, addres