THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 237 



the anomalies that spring out of the imperfection 

 of human nature, which imperfection can at no point 

 be wholly got rid of, and in certain fostering conditions 

 breaks forth with startling prominence. 



The conception of human life as a competitive 

 struggle for existence, in which only _ the fittest survive, 

 is wholly incompatible with the conception of man as 

 a social animal. Four hundred and ninety-three years 

 before the Christian era, Agrippa Menenius, addressing 

 the seceding plebeians of Kome on the Sacred Hill, 

 showed a truer logical perception when he spoke of 

 the State as a body corporate, whose several members 

 depended for their individual well-being upon their 

 mutual co-operation. In several of his epistles St. Paul 

 elaborates the idea of the Church as being one body 

 composed of mutually dependent members, so in- 

 timately connected that if one member is sick all the 

 other members suffer in sympathy with it ; and it is 

 very obvious that his language is drawn from the 

 wider conception which he had formed of the inter- 

 dependence of individuals and classes in the social 

 bond of the body politic. 



Surely this conception is far more in accordance with 

 the phenomena of social life than the Darwinian idea. 

 For how, unless it were the truer idea, could the vast 

 material improvement that has been experienced in 

 Great Britain by every class in the community during 

 the last century have taken place ? Every single 

 industrial class within the bounds of this realm has 

 not only flourished, but has been elevated as to its 



