I need not further dwell upon the fact that statically as regards the relations of men to one another in society at any moment, the truth is fully recognised that the individual is not merely a means to the happiness or well-being of others, but is also in himself an end. But when we consider the proposition dynamically, when we wish to find out the part it has played as one of the forces at work in evolution, we find that its truth has been far from fully recognised--partly perhaps because utilitarianism dates from a time when evolution, or the bearing of it, was not understood. But the truth is at least of as great importance dynamically as it is statically. And on one side, its truth and the importance of its truth has been fully developed: that the individual is a means to an end beyond him; and that, dynamically, he has been and is a factor in evolution, and as a factor merely a means and nothing else--all this has been worked out fully, if not to excess. The other side of the truth, the fact that the individual is always an end, has, however, { 243} been as much neglected by the scientific evolutionist as it was by the slave-driver: he has been liable to regard men as chattels, as instruments by which the work of evolution is carried on. The work has got to be done (by men amongst other animals and things), things have to be evolved, evolution must go on. But, why? and for whom? with what purpose and for whose benefit? with what end? are questions which science leaves to be answered by those people who are foolish enough to ask them. Science is concerned simply with the individual as a means, as one of the means, whereby evolution is carried on; and doubtless science is justified--if only on the principle of the division of labour--in confining itself to the department of enquiry which it takes in hand and in refusing to travel beyond it. Any theory of man, therefore, or of the evolution of humanity, which professes to base itself strictly on scientific fact and to exclude other considerations as unscientific and therefore as unsafe material to build on, will naturally, and perhaps necessarily, be dominated by the notion that the individual exists as a factor in evolution, as one of the means by which, and not as in any sense the end for which, evolution is carried on.
Villages Review
An Introduction to the Study of Comparative Religion — Part 88
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