In my opinion, this position is not permanently tenable. I do not mean that it involves a logical contradiction. I do mean that it involves an emotional and doctrinal incompatibility of a very fundamental kind. And this is a defect which may be even more fatal than logical contradiction to the stability of ethical beliefs. For what was Huxley’s position? His condemnation of evolutionary ethics was far more violent than my own. He states categorically that “What is ethically best involves conduct which in all respects is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence.” On a biological question I differ from him with misgiving; but, as I have already urged, selection may plausibly be credited with the earlier stages of the noblest virtues. I cannot think that the mother who sacrifices herself for her child, the clansman who dies for his chief, the generation which suffers for the sake of its posterity, are indulging in “conduct which is in all respects opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence.” But, whether Huxley be right on this point or I, it is surely impossible for the mass of mankind to maintain, at the cost of much personal loss, an ideal of conduct which science tells us is not merely an evolutionary accident, but an evolutionary mistake; something which was, and is, contrary to the whole trend of the cosmic process which brought us into being, and made us what we are. It requires but a small knowledge of history to show how easily mankind idealises nature; witness such phrases as “the return to nature,” the “state of nature,” “natural rights,” “natural law,” and so forth. Appeals founded upon these notions have proved powerful, even when they ran counter to individualistic selfishness. When the two are in alliance, how can they be resisted? Is it possible for the ordinary man to maintain undimmed his altruistic ideals if he thinks Nature is against them?—unless, indeed he also believes that God is on their side? V Here are questions raised to which there is no parallel in the case of æsthetics. Doubtless differences of æsthetic judgment abound; but they do not produce difficulties quite matching those due to the collision of incompatible ends; nor is their solution so important. On this subject I must say a few words before bringing this lecture to a conclusion. Possible collisions between ends are many, for ends themselves are many. And of these ends some are in their very nature irreconcilable;—based on essential differences which reflection only makes more apparent, and moral growth more profound.