390 THE INFLUENCE OF THE DARWINIAN THEORY. 



factors into the foreground. It soon became obvious that the 

 interpretation of the word " fittest " must depend on the condi- 

 tions to which life has to adapt itself. As I have elsewhere 

 pointed out — 



" m a community of foxes the most cunning fox would survive; 

 in a pack of wolves the wiliest and strongest wolf ; while in a com- 

 munity of ants, those which had the least power of intelligent co- 

 operation would be the first to become extinct. And it is equally 

 obvious that the interpretation of the word " selection " must vary 

 in every grade of life, with every rise in intelligence — intelligence 

 being, in normal circumstances, the prime factor which determines 

 selection. Our garden roses would soon degenerate were not the 

 selective intelligence of the gardener brought into play. Hence, 

 intelligence, whether self-determining or brought into play from 

 without, is obviously one of the conditions which determine fitness. 

 But there are even higher determining conditions than intelligence, 

 for intelligence alone may manifest itself in mere cunning. The 

 qualities of prudence, temperance, fidelity, sympathy, co-operation, 

 self-sacrifice for a common good — all these are amongst the deter- 

 mining conditions of fitness, for a people that has these qualities 

 will always be able to hold its own against an imprudent, intem- 

 perate, unfaithful, unsympathetic, and selfish people. As Darwin 

 himself says : ' A tribe rich in moral qualities would spread and be 

 victorious over other tribes, and thus the social and moral qualities 

 would tend slowly to advance and be diffused throughout the world 

 because they were the fittest to survive.' "* 



All this is now commonplace to the thoughtful evolutionist, 

 but it is necessary to emphasise it occasionally, for I submit that 

 this consideration throws great light, not only on the methods of 

 evolution, but on the nature of the spritual forces which are work- 

 ing in and through evolution. I am not one of those who shut 

 their eyes to the darker sides of nature, or who, burying their 

 heads, ostrich-like, in the sand of what Viscount Morley calls a 

 "complacent religiosity," pretend that everything is for the best 

 in the best of possible worlds. The evils which surround us, many 

 of which seem to be bound up with life itself as we know it, are 

 too palpable to be ignored or minimised by any clear-sighted or 

 right-thinking mind. But, on the other hand, this upward life- 

 tendency, which is everywhere observable in nature, cannot be 

 ignored either. If it does not give us all the light we desire, it 

 gives us enough to show the way we ought to go. For if nature's 

 way is, in the long run, upward, then our way is upward, too, and 

 the lower reaches of nature, in so far as they seem to contradict 

 or militate against this upward tendency, are to be avoided, not 

 imitated, by us. " But we have sprung from those lower reaches !" 

 So we have. But because the darkness of the night gradually and 

 by imperceptible degrees gives place to its apparent opposite, the 

 light of day, that is no reason why we should deny the light or 

 try to adapt our sight and life to conditions of darkness. Pro- 

 fessor Huxley's dictum, that the cosmic process is at issue with 

 the ethical process, is only half the truth, even if that, for the cosmic 

 process includes the ethical process, and, on the higher planes of 

 life, both are often at one. The struggle for existence, even in 

 the lower reaches of life, implies the observance of certain ele- 



*See article on " Darwinism and Empire," Westminster Review, July, 

 1 002. 



