xx SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 269 



off the yoke except for that unhappy minority, the idle 

 classes. Could we destroy social pressure we might find 

 that we had simply destroyed the atmosphere which 

 our souls breathe. 



Yet, if we admit the permanence of struggle, we 

 must strictly cross-examine the theories which are built 

 on that fact, lest they exaggerate it. They have called 

 the process natural selection, in some cases, perhaps, 

 because they were enamoured of struggle, and love- 

 blinded to its dangers ; in some cases but hardly in all 

 cases. What can be the reason why Darwinism has had 

 so great a charm for many sociologists and moralists ? 



Perhaps the reason was that natural selection 

 stated a method of progress without conscious known 

 superintendence. Many different forces struggled or 

 competed nature selected ; environment selected ; the 

 struggle itself selected. Many different patterns were 

 aimed at ; one pattern resulted, and no one had aimed 

 at it. Such at least is the suggestion underlying Mr. 

 W. H. Mallock's definition of evolution as "the reason- 

 able sequence of the unintended." x 



But, if this be the meaning of the appeal to natural 



1 Aristocracy and Evolution, p. 97. I merely observe how curiously 

 the teleological suggestion recurs, even in a phrase which seems designed 

 to exclude teleology. 



Mr. Mallock's interesting book marks an advance, in so far as he 

 insists that progress due to " great men " is more rapid than the physio- 

 logical progress due to natural selection. But he goes on to distinguish 

 this advance, in the sphere of reason and realm of history, from mere 

 biological evolution, on the ground that in the latter, wholes compete, 

 while, in reason and history, parts of the social organism compete against 

 each other. That does not seem to hit the true line of difference, or to 

 mark the real ground of the failure of biological sociology in the past, 

 which Mr. Mallock once again deplores. "Struggling parts" are not 

 unknown in biological speculation. Psychical progress, by great men or 

 otherwise, is direct and therefore rapid. 



Mr. Mallock overdoes his apotheosis of competition. We will still 

 believe that even the " great man " may rise to higher things than an 

 exceptional hugeness of desire. 



