exhaust the field of moral possibilities, if the propositions that goodness means progress, and badness regress, are both true, we must be able to convert them, and maintain that all progress is due to goodness, and all regress to badness. But to be able to do so we must endeavour to meet two great objections which may be urged against the truth of these statements. There is, in the first place, the degeneration of moral institutions, which seems to follow in the natural course of things, and not to be due to any wickedness on the part of the persons concerned. Of such degeneration there seem to be undoubted instances, as in the case of the Bushmen in Africa, or the Patagonians. Here there is regress without badness. Now we must distinguish between two kinds of degeneracy-the one which may be called degradation, which is due to badness, the other which consists only in reversion to a simpler form of life, and is thus apparently retrogressive. Whatever the causes in the past may have been, degeneration seems at present mainly due to a change of conditions, and is comparable to the change by which animals living in the dark, like those of the Kentucky caves, gradually become blind. Many people may thus degenerate naturally by adaptation to new circumstances. They would be varieties which have taken a peculiar direction, and are termed degenerate because their ancestors (like those of the tapeworm) had once a more complex organisation. Their development has, however, been towards greater suitability to their surroundings, and is different altogether from that unsuitability to their conditions which means extinction in the animal world and condemnation in morality. So far then is this degeneration from being a regress, that it is in reality, under the circumstances, a progress. nation in time of war has often simpler and less highly refined customs than in peace: its institutions are degenerate compared with the institutions of peace. But it is those who obey the changed customs who are on the side A of progress. A man who persisted in the ancient practices would be useless and reprehensible: it is he and not his fellow-countrymen who would be morally degenerate or degraded. A person who has to go a long journey on foot wears less elaborate clothing than one who stays at home; but supposing the journey has to be made, it is the simpler and degenerate dress which helps to make the journey more bearable. In like manner, when a young man of good position, finding no proper sphere for his capacities in Europe, settles on a cattle ranch in the west of America, he drops the more cultivated life to which he has been accustomed for one of greater simplicity. But supposing his original act in leaving to have been justified,—that the life he chose was more likely to be suitable to his powers than any he could live in his own country, his degeneration of manners is not regress, but helps on the work of the world, and makes him a more efficient person than he would otherwise have been. 20. Ordinary language confuses between these two ideas of simple degeneracy and actual degradation, just as in dealing with their opposites it confuses between perfection of gifts and goodness. Degeneracy is not retrogressive any more than perfection is necessarily progressive. All depends on the use to which they are put. As the highly gifted man may throw a society into a chaos, so mere simplification of life may be really on the side of advance. Degeneracy appears retrogressive because it is local and out of the main line of development, but within this local area, and therefore as an element in the whole, it is progress. The confusion is all the easier to make because in many cases a change of conditions carries with it moral degradation as well, as when savage tribes are displaced by more highly civilised, and fall victims to the temptations offered by the latter. Here is wickedness on both sides, joined with a change of climate and habitat and mode of life. 21. The difference of degradation from ordinary de generation may be further illustrated from the members. of any one society. A certain amount of vital energy is lost by every one as he grows older, and less is expected of him. He can do less, but he need not degrade. One who has worked hard for many years and has become. rich may claim repose in which his former active energies become dormant. But this is different from moral decline, which means badness: as if a man having become rich should grow simply idle and do work of no kind at all, becoming degraded because he makes no good use of his powers. Take again the degradation sometimes produced by unequal and unworthy marriages. Where the original act is regarded as justifiable, the results will probably not be regarded as anything more than a natural change of circumstances. Measured by such a standard, a legitimate act has ended in mere degeneration, but not badness. On the other hand, when the persons are condemned, it will be partly on account of the wrong committed at first, and then for the moral weakness which could not rise superior to the difficulties of an unhappy situation. We shall then have not simple degeneration, but degradation. 22. The normal decay of powers, ending with death, is the strongest obstacle to the belief that degeneration in the individual is compatible with progress. Yet rightly interpreted it is the strongest confirmation of that belief. Granted, it will be said, that a man may go on being good to the end of his life, how can this journey towards extinction be an advantage to him? Most persons will indeed be ready to admit that the normal death of individuals is an advantage to the race by bringing up a reserve of fresh energy, and so keeping the tide at the full. An eminent biologist, Prof. August Weissmann,1 has shown strong reasons for believing that death came into the world by the ordinary law of selection, according 1 In a paper on the 'Duration of Life.' The translation of this paper, which I have been permitted to see in proof, will be found in the forthcoming translation of Prof. Weissmann's Papers on Heredity (Clarendon Press). to which those phenomena are preserved which tend to efficient existence. The lowest animals never die normally, but reproduce themselves by fission: the child is half its parent. Death intervenes with the complexity of the organism-a complexity which, according to Prof. Weissmann's belief, would expose a highly prolonged life to accident and consequent inefficiency. But this does not directly concern us. Even supposing death a benefit to the species, how can this reconcile us to the individual loss? And it is because we ourselves never enjoy the fruits of our labour that death is regarded as merely a temporary interruption to a life which is to be continued hereafter. But if death promotes the efficiency or the advantage of the type, then since each individual is built upon the law of the species his individual advantage is the same as that of the type. Just as every act of self-sacrifice means a real loss, but is to the good man's permanent happiness, so decay and death are a real loss, but they are incidents in the attainment of a total advantage. Hence two facts which seem contradictory. On the one hand, outside the hopes which are suggested by religion there is no consolation for death, except so far as the individual himself or his family and friends can derive consolation from the knowledge that his life has been one of good service. On the other hand, the sober judgment of mankind accepts death as something preferable to the miseries of protracted life, and finds a real truth in the revolting picture which Swift draws of the Struldbrugs, or in the melancholy one which was painted by the fancy of the Greek of Tithonus praying to be released from the gift of immortality. The difficulty of recognising this arises from two sources. Partly it arises because the question is put to persons whose anguish or whose fears render reflection impossible, and vitiate the experiment. Partly it arises from our drawing an imaginary picture of what might have been if no such decay of powers and subsequent death had existed at all. We set up a standard of advantage according to our wishes, and not according to the facts, and we do not reflect that it is seemingly only on certain terms of compensatory loss that we can retain our higher nature. What applies to degeneration of the individual, as judged by any one standard, applies with proper modification to the course of morality as a whole. As the life which is well lived up to death is on the side of right, though it may in the end only slightly help on the work of society, so a good society under simpler conditions of existence is always on the side of progress, though it may lie outside the main current of advance. ated. 23. (c.) Non-moral Conditions of Progress.-The proposition here maintained that morality means progress, and badness regress, will meet with the constant objection that progress depends on non-moral qualities, which may be in possession of the bad and not of the good. Bad men are often as wise as good men are foolish, and while the latter in their weakness have produced many disasters, much of progress is due to great men who are bad. This second proposition is often absurdly exaggerAlexander and Cæsar, to whom Greece and Rome owes the gratitude due to benefactors, are held up as monsters of crime for shedding the blood of innocent peoples. A judgment of this kind, which is by no means. confined to the survey of ancient times, is but reading a present ideal into a past time, and is an outrage upon the spirit of history. Judged by the standard of their own times both men were not simply great, but performed the duty of their positions. How far either was actuated by merely personal aims is a matter difficult to determine here as elsewhere where ambition to do good deeds and serve the state may be inextricably involved with selfish. interests and the mere desire for power. Apart, however, from such exaggerations, bad men have |