MORAL EVOLUTION 293 



defective, so capable of cold-blooded calculation that it admitted 

 of the elimination of all who had become useless to the tribe 

 or nation, evolution would have been checked at a very early 

 stage. 



In the cruelty of hive bees, then, we can hardly see an 

 exception to the rule that an advance to the higher stages of 

 evolution has been brought about by a tendency to prevent the 

 direct incidence of Natural Selection, not to supplant its pitiless 

 action. Rather we must see in it the highest development of a 

 lower system that evolution was to drop in its upward course. 

 Among men evolution fosters a spirit that is intolerant of cruelty. 

 Folly, except in extreme cases, is reasoned with and preached 

 at, not ruthlessly abolished. And naturally, since to treat it so 

 would be to violate the principles that have made the higher 

 evolution possible. 



But, though shielded by altruistic principles, anti-social The 

 tendencies do not go unchecked. The set of evolution is e 

 against them : the drones among men are in the long run some- among 

 how eliminated without any resort to degrading methods. The m 

 flow of the tide is still more apparent if we consider competing 

 communities rather than individuals. It is through virtue 

 mutual help, loyalty, honesty that nations thrive. 



We see then, that all evolution above the level of the cold- 

 blooded animals has proceeded by means of the elimination of 

 all that had no impulse except to fight and struggle for their 

 own individual selves. At a higher stage, among men, it has 

 advanced partly through the elimination of those whose char- 

 acter was anti-social, but very largely through the repression 

 of anti-social tendencies by religion. If such are the means 

 by which the higher results have been attained, if evil is being 

 perpetually eliminated or subjugated, then we cannot look upon 

 it as a primary principle. Whatever small or temporary victories 

 it has won, they have led only to eventual defeat. 



I wish now to guard against a probable misunderstanding. Two 

 Much has been said about the apparent antagonism between the JJ)*"^,. 

 interest of the individual and that of the community, and the standings 

 function of religion in making a man sink what he deems his own 



