Moral Imagination 185with an example of a species. I, as an organism, am just
such an example of a species; I will live according to na-
ture if I apply the natural laws of the species to my partic-
ular case. But, as a moral being, I am an individual and
have laws of my very own.^3
The view presented here seems to contradict the funda-
mental teaching of modern natural science known as the
theory of evolution. But it onlyseems to be so. People un-
derstandevolutionto mean thereal development, accord-
ing to natural laws, of what is later from what was earlier.
People understand evolution in the organic world to mean
that later (more perfect) organic forms are real descen-
dants of earlier (more imperfect) forms and developed
from them according to natural laws. Adherents of the
theory of organic evolution must actually imagine that
there was once a time on earth when a being—if it were
present as an observer endowed with a sufficiently long
life-span—could have followed with its own eyes the
gradual development of reptiles from proto-amniotes. In
the same way, evolutionists imagine that a being—if it
could have remained in an appropriate spot in the world-
ether during that infinitely long time—could have ob-
served the development of the solar system out of the
- When Paulsen says (System der Ethik, p. 15), “Different natural
predispositions and life conditions require both a different corporeal
diet and a different spiritual-moral diet,” he is quite close to the right
understanding, yet he misses the decisive point. To the extent that I
am an individual, I do not need a diet. Dietetics is the art of bringing
the particular example into harmony with general laws. But as an
individual I am not an example of a species. (Author’s note)