sequent preservation of weaklings, we have gained some intellectual advance through the occasional chance of a Newton and a moral advance through the cultivation of sympathy and tenderness,' in such a position is there not some inconsistency, some sacrifice of natural selection in favour of human selection consciously or half-consciously directed to other ends than those of mere nature? Our attention is thus called to another factor in that universal strife which is the story of the universe. So soon as a sufficient social development and a sufficiently advanced type of language make it possible, there begins a competition between ideas. The age of conflict is, in Bagehot's phrase, succeeded by "the age of discussion," and the ideas, which rise in the minds of men with the same tendency to variation that we find throughout nature, compete with one another 1 E. Clodd Story of Creation, p. 211, Physics and Politics, for sustenance and support. The conception of natural selection may be applied here also to explain how certain ideas come to obtain that relatively fixed and definite character which belongs, for instance, to the moral principles currently accepted within a community at any given time. Thus such ideas as patriotism, respect of human life as such, self-control in regard to the bodily appetites, have won their way so as to become factors in the struggle and to conflict with the operation of natural selection as this prevails among the mere animals. Why then may not such ideas as Equality and Fraternity claim to have a fair chance in the struggle for existence? If they can win possession of more and more minds in the world, they will become actual influences on conduct and will from being mere ideals tend to bring about their own realisation. "Opinions," said + Cp. Fouillée La Science Sociale Contemporaine, p, xii., &c, Lord Palmerston, "are stronger than armies." One of the first conditions of any institution being altered is that people should come to imagine it as conceivably altered. The great difficulty of the reformer is to get people to exert their imagination to that extent. Now what does all this amount to except to a recognition of the difference introduced into natural evolution by the appearance of consciousness? I shall not now attempt to work out all the philosophical implications involved in this recognition of consciousness: nor, in order to show how through consciousness man becomes free from the tyranny of nature, shall I quote the words of any one whose evidence might be suspected because he might be called a mere metaphysician. I shall quote the words of a witness whom no scientific man would rejectProf. Huxley : Society like art is a part of nature. But it is convenient to distinguish those parts of nature in which man plays the part of immediate cause as something apart; and, therefore, society, like art, is usefully to be considered as distinct from nature. It is the more desirable, and even necessary, to make this distinction, since society differs from nature in having a definite moral object; whence it comes about that the course shaped by the ethical man-the member of society or citizen-necessarily runs counter to that which the nonethical man—the primitive savage, or man as a mere member of the animal kingdom-tends to adopt. The latter fights out the struggle for existence to the bitter end, like any other animal; the former devotes his best energies to the object of setting limits to the struggle. "The history of civilisation—that is of society-is the record of the attempts which the human race has made to escape from this position [i.e., the struggle for existence in which those who were best fitted to cope with their circumstances, but not the best in any other sense, survived]. The first men who substituted the state of mutual peace for that of mutual war, whatever the motive which impelled them to take that step, created society. But in establishing peace, they obviously put a limit upon the struggle for exist ence. Between the members of that society, at anyrate, it was not to be pursued à outrance. And of all the successive shapes which society has taken, that most nearly approaches perfection in which war of individual against individual is most strictly limited."1 Professor Huxley then goes on to show how the struggle for existence appears in a new form through the zealous fulfilment of what we are told was the first commandment given to man—“ Be fruitful and multiply." But, instead of arguing, as before, that the further history of civilisation must consist in putting a limit to this new economic struggle, he avoids drawing any such inference, and very lamely concludes that we must establish technical schools. These are most desirable and necessary institutions, but they might fulfil some better purpose than what he proposes-which is simply to sharpen our claws that we may fight our neighbours the more fiercely and destroy them the more successfully. Let us be grateful, however, to Professor Huxley for the scientific conclusions 1 Art. "The Struggle for Existence" in Nineteenth Century Feb. 1888, pp. 165, 166. |