of only one duty in the individual, namely, his duty to himself to make the most of the few precious years of consciousness he can ever know. Every other consideration must appear dwarfed and ridiculous in comparison. Every pain avoided, every pleasure gained in these few years, is a consideration, beside which the intellect must count any aspiration to further a process of cosmic evolution in which the individual has no interest as mere dust in the balance. We must expect wealth and power, in such circumstances, to be grasped at with a fierce earnestness, not for what are called sordid motives, but for intellectual motives over and above all others; that is to say, for the command of the pleasures and gratifications which they alone can secure. And it must be remembered that the universal experience of mankind has been, and is still, that wealth and power divorced from the control of ethical influences of the kind in question have not sought to find satisfaction in what are called the higher altruistic pleasures, but that they have rather, as evolutionary science would have taught us, sought the satisfaction of those instincts which have their roots deepest in our natures. Voluptuousness and epicureanism in all their most refined forms. have everywhere been, and every where continue to be, the accompaniments of irresponsible wealth and power, the corresponding mental habit being one of cultured contempt for the excluded and envious masses. Nor, as already pointed out, must any weight be attached to the argument that would ask us to take note of the many exceptions to such a tendency to be found in present society, in individuals of the highest motives and purest lives, who are not in any way under the influence of the religious movement upon which our civilisation is founded. Once we have grasped the con ception of our civilisation as a developing organic growth, with a life-history which must be studied as a whole, we perceive how irrational it is to regard any of the units as independent of the influence of a process which has operated upon society for so many centuries. As well might we argue that because the fruit survives for a time when removed from the tree, and even mellows and ripens, that it was, therefore, independent of the tree. In this connection it should be remarked that the relationship between true socialism and rationalism, casually noticed by many observers, is not accidental as it is often stated to be. It has its foundation deep-seated in the very nature of things. The conflict between the forces shaping the course of the development we are at present undergoing, and the materialistic socialism of Marx, is but the present-day expression of that conflict in which we have seen man engaged against his own reason throughout the whole course of his social development. Socialism in reality aims at exploiting in the interests of the existing generation of individuals that humanitarian movement which is providing a developmental force operating largely in the interests of future generations. It would, in fact, exploit this movement while it cut off the springs of it. True socialism of the German type must be recognised to be ultimately as individualistic and as anti-social as individualism in its advanced forms. Scientifically, they are both to be considered as the extreme logical expression of rationalistic protest by the individual against the subordination of his interests to the process of progressive development society is undergoing from generation to generation. But though we have thus to identify socialism with political materialism, R . no greater mistake can be made than to suppose that the ultimate triumph of materialism in our Western civilisation would imply the realisation of the ideals of socialism. The state to which we should probably attain long before reaching this stage would be one in which the power-holding classes, recognising the position, would with cynical frankness proceed to utilise the inherent strength of their own position. Instead of slowly yielding their position as they are now doing, under the softening influence upon general character of an ethical movement-which by undermining their faith in their own cause has deprived them of the power of making effective resistance they might be expected to become once more aggressive in the open profession of class selfishness and contempt for the people. History presents a melancholy record of the helplessness of the latter when society has reached this stage. The deliberate effectiveness with which the power - holding classes in ancient Rome dealt with the rights of the people in such circumstances in the long downward stage under the Empire is instructive, and bears its moral on the surface. In such a state of society the classes who have obtained wealth and power, and all other classes in turn, instead of acting, as they now do, under the influence of an evolutionary force operating largely in the future interests of society, come to hold it as a duty to themselves to serve their own present interests by such direct means as may be available. In vague popular phraseology, society in this stage is said to be irremediably corrupt: strictly speaking the social organism has exhausted its physiological capital, and has, therefore, entered on the downward stage towards disintegration. CHAPTER IX HUMAN EVOLUTION IS NOT PRIMARILY INTELLECTUAL THE biologist who has attempted to carry the methods of his science thus far into the consideration of the phenomena presented in human society, now finds himself approaching a conclusion of a remarkable kind. If the inferences it has been the object of the preceding chapters to establish are justified, it must be evident that they have a very wide significance of a kind not yet considered. It is not improbable that the reader, as he has advanced through the last three chapters, may have felt that one idea has assumed increasing prominence in his mind. Admitting, he may say, that our civilisation is to be viewed as a single organic growth, the significance whereof consists in the fact that the developmental process proceeding therein tends to raise the rivalry of life to the highest degree of efficiency by bringing all the people into it on a footing of equality; that the motive force which has been behind this development has its seat in that fund of altruistic feeling with which our civilisation has become equipped; and that this fund of altruistic feeling has been the characteristic product of the religious system associated with our civilisation - whither does this lead us? What guarantee have we that the development which has been proceeding is to continue? Do not the signs of the times indicate a decline in the strength and vitality of those feelings and ideas upon which our religious systems have been founded? It is to be feared that the rationalistic school which has been in the ascendant during the greater part of the nineteenth century, and which has raised such unstinted pæans in honour of the intellect, regarding it as the triumphant factor of progress in the splendid ages to come, is destined to undergo disillusionment in many respects. Sooner or later it must become clear to all the more far-seeing thinkers amongst this party that, in so far as the Western peoples have to depend solely on their intellectual capacity, and the results of their intellectual development, to maintain the supremacy they have obtained over what are called the lower races, they are leaning on a false hope. As time goes on, it must be realised that the promise of the intellect in this respect is a delusive one. All the conquests of mind, all the arts and inventions of life, will be open to the rest of the world as well as to these peoples, and not only may be equally shared in by others, but may be utilised with effect against the Western races themselves in the competition of life. As the process of development proceeds it must become increasingly evident that the advanced races will have no power, in virtue of their intellectual characteristics alone, to continue to retain the position of ascendency they have hitherto enjoyed throughout the world, and that if they have no other secret of rule than this, the sceptre is destined eventually to pass from them. But is this, then, the message of evolutionary science? Has the development which has been in progress through |