Georg von Gitzycki

“ If natural selection is to select the good, then the good must already be there. It does not contradict this principle, that the human race will die out as other species have died out; but it follows directly from the principle that the race must die out if it becomes bad. Not without us, but through us, through our volition, conscious of that purpose, will the continuous development go on. In our day, says Salter, in his "Religion of Morals," evolution is sometimes regarded as if it was something outside of us and above us, and we had only to wait on its motion. ”

“ As Everett has remarked, again, one society may favor the growth of righteousness and honor, another that of knavery and hypocrisy. In one, drunkenness and sensuality, and similar vices, may cause a man to sink to the lowest circles of society; in another, they may raise him till he reaches the highest. But here, at last, we have a principle, to which these social conditions are themselves responsible. The one society will develop one type of character, the other a different one ”

“ What we call justice is the only enduring basis on which society can rest. The nations that do wrong and despise justice, which lose themselves in sensual intoxication, are at last broken up, and a purer, stronger, and less depraved race takes their place. ”

“ The development theory, which has made us acquainted, as perhaps no former generation has been, with the idea of progress, has also accustomed us to regard the moral as one of the fields in which progress takes place; and, furthermore, to look forward to perfection in the moral nature. Moral progress consists, not in men coming nearer to their ideals, but in their ideals reaching a higher plane. ”

“ We are glad to learn from the evolutionist all he can tell us of the nature of things, and of the means of reaching the object sought after by us. Of this object, however, we do not learn from a natural history of the objective world, but from the study of our own hearts. It is, therefore, self-evident that the utilitarian or the ethicist, who regards the highest general good as the chief moral standard, will make use of all knowledge that can cast light on the way to his end. ”

“ We men actually make our continued existence an object of fundamental importance, because, without realizing it, no other object is attainable. We are thus justified in calling all our properties that contribute to the maintenance of life adapted to that purpose. ”

“ If, however, by the phrase, "health of society," something else is understood than a society consisting of healthy individuals, then the word "health" is only a metaphor, and one the sense of which is not clear; and to put this metaphor in the place of the principle of the happiness of the whole can not be regarded as an improvement. If Bentham should return now, he would have to censure the evolutionist ethics in no slight measure for its vague generalities and empty declamations, and its playing with phrases, and to combat its lack of circumspection. ”

“ All in him, like all around him, is a product of natural, regular development. Even his moral part is not something laid upon him from outside of Nature, but something which has been shaped out of his own nature, molding itself according to the conditions of his existence. To an ethicist who accepts this view, morals will appear an affair of humanity and for humanity—for humanity on earth ”

“ It teaches us to bring into special consideration the moral conceptions of the most successful nations in the struggle for existence; for, if their views of right and wrong had diverged greatly from what is really beneficial to society, they would not have reached their dominant position. But the recognition that, in consequence of the complicated conditions of life, the adaptation is never complete, must restrain us from ever regarding the "positive morals" of a people—that is, the sum of their actual moral ideas—as being absolutely perfect. ”

“ Science teaches what has been, but not what will be. If the "tendencies" of Nature which they think they have determined were simply laws of Nature, conditions of the inevitable occurrence of events, there would be no reason in seeking to make a moral imperative of them ”

“ Evolutionists, who recognize that life is valuable only as it is good, have occasionally fallen into the mistake of considering among the consequences of conduct only the effects on the condition of soundness, and of disregarding the pain that may be immediately produced by it; and they have not always been mindful that, according to their own definitions, fullness of life can be valuable only if we include in it fullness of happiness or some cause thereof.
Those evolutionists who appeal to the ancient principle of a Nature fitted life have apparently not sufficiently considered one thing. ”

“ The cosmical power of natural selection is not against, but for, morals. It sanctions the most exalted ethical ideals, such as the choicest minds have conceived. It is a judgment-power, because it permits only that which is right and perfect to endure, and lets the unjust, the base, and the evil perish.
The knowledge that this world-power supports virtue, and contributes its part in elevating the moral nature, will inspire the moralist in his efforts in behalf of the good, and in his contention against the bad. ”

“ With this view of the place of man in Nature, the ethicist can not easily oppose the doctrine that the same legality rules in the human will as in all the other processes of Nature. Even in the matter of the appearance of new individuals, the development theory admits no void in the endless chain of causation; for the dispositions which man brings into the world are, in consequence of it, nothing else than a product of the energies of his predecessors. ”

“ The principle of natural selection is not contradicted by any fact in the history of mankind. The determination of what of its members shall survive is an affair of the particular constitution of a society. ”

“ But, if we, regarding our belief in God as a justification for the introduction of the divine idea into science, and not heeding the many difficulties which ethics has hitherto encountered in basing its precepts on the presumed will of God, endeavor to determine what his will is, we shall have very little, if any, success in convincing the faithful that it is for the most prolonged existence of the greatest number. ”

“ While this correlation is far from being perfect, it is, nevertheless, true that a more certain road to happiness lies through maintaining or improving the health than through a direct striving after a maximum of pleasure. The same rule prevails in society. The sound health of society must be the practical end through reaching which alone the real prosperity of society can be attained. ”

“ Still less can we speak of the purposes of plants, for plants have no consciousness. It is thus clear that, so far as the sub-human world is concerned, the designation of the life-preserving attributes of existence as designed, unless we are speaking in a theological sense, is only metaphorical. For this designation implies the premise that life is an object; and this, in a proper, untheological sense, is true only as respects human consciousness. ”

“ A few adherents of the development theory, including Darwin himself, have held that not the good of mankind, but the maintenance of his existence, is the moral principle resulting from it; and that feelings of pleasure and of pain are only the means which Nature uses to promote the exercise of life-favoring and restraint from life-injuring conduct ”

“ And we should obey the moral command to make those tendencies ours, and advance them according to our strength so far as they appear good to us; as we also should hold a corresponding conduct to be right without this, without regarding it as advancing natural tendencies. What we should regard as good or evil, as worth striving for or to be avoided, must present a corresponding character to our own perception; and what that is arises out of our own nature, not out of something different from what that might be. ”

“ The chances that the posterity of men possessing such traits of character as we have sketched will maintain themselves long, that they will not, sooner or later, fail, in consequence of collisions with the "physical, legal, or social sanction," with the laws of health or of the state, or with the demands of society, are not very great. ”

“ THE question of the bearing of the theory of evolution upon morals deserves a serious examination. The doctrine of development breaks at many points with cherished traditional notions, and its opponents have predicted that it would result in a spiritual revolution which would convulse society to its foundations by destroying the sanctions of conscience and paralyzing the religious sense. ”

“ The evolutionist will tell him that there is a correlation, on one side, between disagreeable and destructive, and on the other side between pleasurable and advantageous action; that the "useful," in the sense of the pleasurable, nearly agrees with the useful in the sense of the life-maintaining; and that there is a close connection between health and happiness and between disease and unhappiness. ”

“ Even as relating to men, these persons will not believe that self-preservation as such is the highest good. Bare existence is no good, much less the highest good; but it may be, if it is a bad existence, the highest evil, and this according to the perfectionist doctrine as well as according to the utilitarian theory of happiness. There is said to be existence, yes, eternal existence, even in hell ”

“ It is the universal natural force that also regulates human life. And what do we see in human life? A fearful amount of moral and physical evil which is not prevented, but rather in part begotten by that regulator. ”

“ Ideas on the one side, a self-forgetting resignation on the other, are what have given the victory to the higher races. Whatever restricts the course of either mental or moral development strikes the hardest possible blow against the stability of the social organism. ”

“ But if those "tendencies" are not a fate to be fulfilled with irresistible necessity, but can be antagonized, then the question arises, Why should we act according to them, and not try to counteract them? If we were once agreed that the complete working out of those tendencies would cross all our desires and hopes, would we recognize the ethic imperative of promoting them? ”

“ The chief moral principle expresses that from which all of the rules of right may be derived, and accordingly means the highest rule of conduct, the highest moral aim of life, or the ethical highest good, and serves as the highest standard of estimation and judgment. Those evolutionists of whom we have just spoken start from a teleological view of the world—from the view that the course of Nature is governed by some purpose. ”

“ We have hitherto considered only the lives of individuals and of single generations, but we must also regard the lives of peoples. It is manifest in this collective life, in a vastly higher measure than in individual life, that "the wages of sin is death." ”

“ The investigator has to break with teleology in all its forms; and, even in ethics, the question of the object, of the destiny of man, will have to be given up. This idea of a purpose or design in Nature, when we come to analyze it, of a preconceived and voluntary operation working to produce determined effects, presumes by necessary implication the agency of a will behind the causes which are leading up to those effects. ”

“ A certain degree of honor, according to the proverb, is required for a man to preserve his social standing in a society of thieves. But, besides the avoidance of flagrant violations of the social contract, there is nothing which is universally and always debarred by the demands of the social environment. ”

“ The objection has been brought against this doctrine, in divers phrases and with a variety of statement, that it leads to extreme demoralization. It can not be denied that Darwin's designation of the principle discovered by him as the "struggle for existence" is not fortunate, and is a metaphor, indicating a conscious hostile contention between living beings, each seeking the other's destruction, that has no real existence as such. And it will not be disputed that Darwin has been led into errors similar to those embodied in the theory of Malthus ”

“ We may apparently, however, presume that that which is practically the most wholesome will endure in the character, provided the teacher does not trust too much to the innate moral instincts, but recognizes that, while his child has the qualities requisite to his becoming a moral man under favorable conditions, this is not sure to be the case if those conditions are wanting, and therefore exercises extreme care in moral instruction. ”

“ But life is never a purpose to animals. The idea of preserving life does not arise in their consciousness, and can not therefore be the object of a volition; while the lower animals have no ideas, but only sensations and perceptions. ”

“ We make it our task to contend incessantly by our premeditated action against that evil, while we regard the world, which is here without our assistance, not as the best possible, but as something which we must labor to improve and make more rational. ”

“ Rolph has shown that, in following the history of organic development on the earth, we can really perceive no tendency to an adaptation showing design, to the production of forms that may be represented to human conception as higher. ”