ANTAGONISM. 609 



said, "War is the father and king of all things." Hobbes said 

 war is the natural state of man, but his expressions have about 

 them some little ambiguity. In Chapter I of the " De Corpore 

 Politico," he says, " Irresistible might in a state of Nature is 

 right," and " The estate of man in this natural liberty is war." 

 Subsequently he says, "A man gives up his natural right, for 

 when divers men having right not only to all things else, but to 

 one another's persons, if they use the same there ariseth thereby 

 invasion on the one part and resistance on the other, which is war, 

 and therefore contrary to the laiv of Nature, the sum whereof con- 

 sisteth in making peace.'' I can only explain this apparent incon- 

 sistency by supposing he meant " law of Nature " to be something 

 different from " the natural estate of man," and that the making 

 peace was the first effort at contract, or the beginning of law ; but 

 then why call it the "law of Nature," where he says might is 

 right ? There is, however, some obscurity in the passage. The 

 Persian divinities, Ormuzd and Ahriman, were the supposed rulers 

 or representatives of good and evil, always at war, and causing 

 the continuous struggle between human beings animated respect- 

 ively by these two principles. Undoubtedly good and evil are 

 antagonistic, but antagonism, as I view it, is as necessary to good 

 as to evil, as necessary to Ormuzd as to Ahriman. Zoroaster's re- 

 ligion of a divine being, one and indivisible, but with two sides, is, 

 to my mind, a more philosophical conception. The views of La- 

 marck on the modification of organic beings by effort, and the 

 establishment of the doctrine of Darwin as to the effects produced 

 by the struggle for existence and domination, come much nearer 

 to my subject. Darwin has shown how these struggles have 

 modified the forms and habits of organized beings, and tended to 

 increased differentiation, and Prof. Huxley and Herbert Spencer 

 have powerfully promoted and expanded these doctrines. To the 

 latter we owe the happy phrase, " survival of the fittest " ; and Prof. 

 Huxley has recently, in a paper in the " Nineteenth Century," an- 

 ticipated some points I should have adverted to as to the social 

 struggles for existence. To be anticipated, and by a very short 

 period, is always trying, but it is more trying when what you in- 

 tended to say has been said by your predecessor in more terse and 

 appropriate language than you have at your command. 



I propose to deal with " antagonism " inductively — i. e., with 

 facts derived from observation alone — and not to meddle with 

 spiritual matters or with consequences. Let us begin with what 

 we know of the visible universe, viz., suns, planets, comets, me- 

 teorites, and their effects. These are all pulling at each other, 

 and resisting that pull by the action of other forces. Any change 

 in this pulling force produces a change, or, as it is called, pertur- 

 bation, in the motion of the body pulled. The planet Neptune, as 



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