270 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD CHAP. 



selection and to struggle, it almost forces us to ask 

 whether our definition has gone deep enough. Are the 

 competitors in reality so many distinct ultimate factors 

 in progress ? Or are they all held in the grasp of one 

 great evolving system ? not, however, to be defined as 

 matter and motion growing more complex! Is the 

 relation between the different forces simply or mainly 

 one of rivalry ; is it not predominantly one of co-opera- 

 tion ? Is history a Kilkenny cat struggle between 

 nations, or in history is struggle itself subordinated to 

 an evolution of mankind ? Ought an enlightened nation 

 to regard its neighbours mainly as rivals, or mainly as 

 brothers in the common tasks of civilisation ? And so 

 with ethical conceptions ; is the history of moral thought 

 mainly a struggle of system against system, of ideal 

 against ideal, or is it an evolution of one ideal ? And 

 is each moralist pledged by fidelity to his own views to 

 eat up and destroy his rivals, or may he also be the 

 conscious servant of a wider truth? Even in nature, 

 one more and more questions the adequacy of the view 

 which regards the various organisms simply as each 

 other's rivals, the co-operating forces simply as happen- 

 ing to coincide. And, when we pass on to the fuller 

 " symbiosis " of reason and morality, the Darwinian 

 formulae snap in two. Men superficially regarded are 

 competitors, but essentially they are their brothers' 

 keepers, and members of one great fellowship. 



Yet one more attempt may be made to find a guide 

 for conduct in phenomenal knowledge, if evolution 

 everywhere and necessarily is equivalent to progress. 

 We have met this view before more than once ; first 

 in the appeal to history, then in Mr. Spencer's cosmic 

 doctrine of evolution. Here too, if anywhere, the con- 



