Evolution and Ethics: T.H. Huxley's Evolution and Ethics with New Essays on Its Victorian and Sociobiological Context

The pleasure of Huxley's grandiloquent prose, argument by horticultural metaphor and analogy, the breadth and scope of cosmic and social forces, and use of fairy tale combine into a masterful argument for evolution and ethics. Obviously, since Mendelian genetics was not yet known, Huxley's view of evolution is incomplete. But, Huxley already saw the defects of Spencer's "survival of the fittest," the emergence of existential self-assertion, and the tension in the forces between competition in the struggle for survival and cooperation as a means for its achievement. Huxley's purpose is not to prescribe, but to warn of the pitfalls of imposing "nature as a guide" or the Stoic's "live according to nature" to humans' moral sense. He rightly keeps virtue, instinct, benevolence, limited resources, reproduction, and self-preservation in proper tension and focus. Most importantly, he argues forcefully that evolutionary theory is a theory of nature, not a moral prescription, but equally, no moral sense or moral theory can successfully ignore evolution's essential insights. The balance in sustaining competing concepts is dazzling. Huxley's masterful essay is preceded by James Faradis's introduction on Huxley's Victorian context and is followed by G. C. Williams's update of the Modern Synthesis. A gem and treasure, all. Especially valuable to non-biologists.