inequalities, it can be urged, are only part of what exist inevitably throughout the physical world. The creed of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity can be discarded as a metaphysical fiction of the unscientific eighteenth century. The aspirations of socialism can be put aside as the foolish denial of the everlasting economic competition which is sanctioned by nature as only one phase of the general struggle for existence.

Let us suppose for a moment that our biological politicians are correct in their view of social evolution: they ought, at least, to cease talking to us of "the beneficent working of the survival of the fittest," or "the beneficent private war, which makes one man strive to climb on the shoulders of another." This talk

of "beneficence" is itself but a survival, not or

1 H. Spencer The Man versus the State p. 69; Maine Popular Government, p. 50.

the fittest, but of the "theological" belief in a God who wills the happiness of his creaturesthe attenuated creed of the English Deists-or of the "metaphysical " belief in a Nature which, if only left to itself, leads to better results than can be secured by any interference of man. That was the type of thinking in the days of Rousseau and Adam Smith: and our evolutionary enthusiasts, when they talk of beneficence, are, after all, only repeating the creed of the despised eighteenth century, or else they are only disguising under a hypocritical phrase the triumphant crowing of the successful fighting-cock, aloft on his own dung-heap, while his vanquished opponent slinks away battered and bleeding. From natural selection there have resulted wonderful adaptations, but how much of suffering by the way, how much of horrid cruelty in these adaptations themselves? The great Darwin himself speaks in a very different

tone from that of his jubilant disciples. Things do not look so clear to him. He marvels at this wonderful universe, and especially at the nature of man, but "I cannot see," he says,

as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all There seems to me too much

sides of us.

misery in the world.":

"If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav'n's design, Why then a Borgia or a Catiline ?"

asks Pope with the contented optimism of his easy-going age. And if the fratricidal morality of the bee-hive and the fiendish cunning of the Sphex are to be admired, is there not a similar justification for military despotism and tyrannical cruelty, or for the ingenious device of the sweating system?

"We dined, as a rule, on each other.

What matter? the toughest survived.”2

1 From a letter to Dr. Asa Gray in Life and Letters, II. 312. • May Kendall, Dreams to Sell, "Ballad of the Ichthyosaurus."

This is a sufficient morality in the mesozoic epoch for the ichthyosaurus, to whom the sentiment is ascribed by the poet; and it is a convenient morality for some human animals in London to-day. Admirable, doubtless-this scheme of salvation for the elect by the damnation of the vast majority; but, pray, do not let us hear anything more about its "beneficence."

I am not speaking at random about these ethical applications of the conception of struggle for existence. Darwin himself, as always, is most cautious and guarded in his reference to anything that lies outside his own special sphere of observation. He looks forward to the elimination of the lower races by the higher civilised races throughout the world.' He points out how "a struggle for existence consequent on his rapid multiplication," has advanced man to his present high condition;

1 Life and Letters, I., p. 316.

and, if he is to advance still higher, it is to be feared that he must remain. subject to a severe struggle. Otherwise he would sink into indolence, and the more gifted men would not be more successful in the battle of life than the less gifted." This, doubtless, includes the old objection which Aristotle brought against Plato's communism, that man needs a stimulus to exertion and industry. But there is no jubilation, no exaltation of a natural law into an ethical ideal. And let us note how Darwin modifies this very statement in the words that follow :

"Important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the highest part of man's nature is concerned there are other agencies more important. For the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, etc, than through natural selection; though to this latter agency may be

1 Descent of Man, p. 618.