382 SYMBIOGENESIS 



Selection, and that therefore his teaching had been misinter- 

 preted, yet it is only too well known that even at the present 

 day many of his followers object to this abrogation 

 of Darwin's Grand Functionary, relentless competition, as not 

 in the best interests of the human race. A strong under- 

 current of opinion has remained among numbers of men that 

 at least from time to time the full rigour of "Natural 

 Selection " (i.e., starvation and death as the chief factor of 

 progressive evolution !) had to be applied if the world was to be 

 /rejuvenated. If "Natural Selection" is a law of Nature so 

 runs the silent argumentation it stands to reason that it must 

 \ assert itself in the end over all man-made laws. True (so it is 

 I thought) there are always a number of sentimentalist or 

 "weak-minded" people who cherish "fond illusions" of 

 better things; but in the absence of scientific foundation for 

 such optimist philosophy, and lest they should become involved 

 in cant the materia prima of the Devil, according to Carlyle 

 the "strong-minded" refuse to be "beguiled" by 

 "sentimental stuff," preferring to pin their faith instead to 

 the inexorable law of deadly competition. 



Did not human history, at least in some of its more con- 

 spicuous episodes, also lend itself to an interpretation that 

 seemed to support Darwinistic pessimism ! Did not even a 

 Carlyle very preacher of the gospel of endeavour and hater of 

 Darwinism moved by the contemplation of so great a 

 catastrophe as the French Revolution, exclaim: "The lowest, 

 least blessed fact one knows of, on which necessitous mortals 

 have ever based themselves seems to be the primitive one of 

 Cannibalism: That I can devour Thee." " Et tous les temps 

 sans doute ont entendu de ces declarations pessimistes. Dante 

 avait formule la pensee que nous retrou\ons sous la plume 

 d'Anatole France : ' Nous faisons notre vie avec la mort des 

 autres ' " (Bougie). 



Did not both evolutionist and historian agree that that 

 " arch-sentimentalist," Jean Jacques Rousseau, was an idle 

 dreamer, if not an impostor (as they also, quite wrongly, at one 



