IN the preceding lectures I have given reasons for
thinking that in two great departments of human
interest--Æsthetics and Ethics--the highest be-
liefs and emotions cannot claim to have any sur-
vival value. They must be treated as by-products
of the evolutionary process; and are, therefore, on
the naturalistic hypothesis, doubly accidental.
They are accidental in the larger sense of being
the product of the undesigned collocation and in-
terplay of material entities--molecular atoms, sub-
atoms, and ether--which preceded, and will pre-
sumably outlast, that fraction of time during
which organic life will have appeared, developed,
and perished. They are also accidental in the nar-
rower sense of being only accidentally associated
with that process of selective elimination, which,
if Darwinism be true, has so happily imitated con-
trivance in the adaptation of organisms to their
environment. They are the accidents of an acci-
dent.

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