LESSONS OF EVOLUTION 617 



darkness who find the great task of happiness altogether 

 too hard. 



Similarly, in regard to functional fatigue, there is a 

 very considerable body of experimental fact in regard to the 

 profitable length of a school-lesson, the profitable length of 

 a school-day, the profitable length of a working-day, but how 

 slow we are to utilise expert advice. In regard to occupational 

 fatigue it is well known that it is the last straw that breaks 

 the camel's back, and that what gives a push towards the 

 danger-zone is often the entirely remediable delay in procur- 

 ing appetising food. 



These are familiar instances which we use simply as dia- 

 grams of the sad fact that we have got so accustomed to fold- 

 ing the hands when we did not know what to do, that we 

 continue our resigned acquiescence even when the path of 

 effective action is clear. 



Professor Ward has spoken warmly of what man may 

 achieve by an increased control of life (Realms of Ends, p. 

 112). " What the schoolmaster, the physician, and the phi- 

 lanthropist effect for the amelioration of the masses needs no 

 description. Here again we have definite direction over- 

 riding the random and untrained impulses of the natural 

 man. While the progress already made in the physical and 

 social ameloriation of human life is inestimable, it is as noth- 

 ing compared with what is still possible. Nine-tenths of our 

 physical ills are due to ignorance and perhaps a still greater 

 proportion of our social evils are due to selfishness. Present 

 scientific knowledge is adequate to remedy a very large 

 proportion of the former, and the ordinary prudential 

 maxims of utilitarian morality, if they were only observed 

 as they might be, would go far towards extinguishing the 

 latter: they would put an end to the worships of Venus, 



