ETHICS OF THE COMPETITIVE PROCESS 155
of those who are ethically the best." 1 When, now, to this ethical element, contributed by self-consciousness, we add the cognitive factor of reason which suggests the possibility, as well as the means by which man may take active steps to realize his new desires, we render almost self-evident the principle that should govern both individual and social action. This is, in short, that the slower and more expensive method of structural development by means of the biologic law should be supplanted by a process devised by the intellect of man, in which the operation cf the former law is checked where it is seen to lead to evil or to entail an unnecessary amount of waste and suffering.
Professor Huxley in the address from which we have already quoted has elaborated this principle with great clearness :
Men in society [he says] are undoubtedly subject to the cosmic process. As among other animals, multiplication goes on without cessation, and involves severe competition for the means of support. The struggle for existence tends to eliminate those less fitted to adapt themselves to the circumstances of their existence ; the strongest, the most self-assertive, tend to break down the weaker. But the influence of the cosmic process on the evolution of society is the greater the more rudimentary its civilization. Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at ever}' step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process ; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which obtain, but of those who are ethically the best
And he continues :
The practice of that which is ethically best what we call goodness or vir- tue involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion, it demands self-restraint ; in place of thrusting aside, or tread- ing down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help his fellows ; its influence is directed, not so much to the
survival of the fittest, as to the fitting of as many as possible to survive
Laws and moral precepts are directed to the end of curbing the cosmic pro- cess and reminding the individual of his duty to the community, to the pro- tection and influence of which he owes, if not existence itself, at least the life of something better than a brutal savage.
While the main conclusions reached by Huxley in his Romanes address have received very general acceptance, two more or less technical criticisms have been made to his mode of
1 HUXLEY, Evolution and Ethics.
