THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

I. 1. The Harmony of Virtue51Keshav: Is it not then the virtue of an animal to evolve thequalities and powers native to his animality?Wilson: I suppose so.Keshav: And man, being an animal, ought also to evolve thequalities and powers native to his animality.Wilson: That seems to follow, but is not this to cancelour old description of human virtue and break down our secondrung?Keshav: No, for just as the qualities native to a planet includethe qualities native to a star, so the qualities native to thehuman type include the qualities native to the animal type.Wilson: I quite agree with you now. What was my seconderror?Keshav: You talked of the lower animal nature and the higherspiritual nature and in so talking assumed that the qualities peculiarto the human being are higher than the qualities he shareswith some or all of the animals. Is dissimulation higher than love?You reject the idea with contempt: yet dissimulation is peculiarto the human being but love, and love of the most spiritual kind,he shares with the turtle-dove and with the wild-duck of the Indianmarshes who cannot sleep the livelong night because Naturehas severed him from his mate but ever wails across thecold and lapping water with passionate entreaty that she maysolace his anguish with even a word, and travellers straying inthe forest hear his forlorn cry “Love, speak to me!” No, we canonly say of varying qualities that one is beautiful and anotherless beautiful, or not beautiful at all; and beauty does not residein being animal or being more than animal but in something verydifferent.Wilson: And my third error?Keshav: Your third error was to confound evolution withelimination.Wilson: And does it not really come to that?Keshav: The vulgar opinion, which finds a voice as usualin Tennyson — what opinion of the British average does henot echo? — the vulgar opinion learns that the principle of evolutionor gradual perfection is the reigning principle of life andadopts the idea to its own stupid fallacy that perfection implies