388 SYMBIOGENESIS 



Sometimes I have tried to think that Huxley and his 

 school, when using the metaphorical phrase "the struggle for 

 existence," entertained at least vaguely a kind of mental 

 reservation anent rne value of the underlying operation of 

 natural co-operation. Such hopes, however, are quickly 

 dispelled on coming across passages such as Huxley's likening 

 the world to a gladiator's show, and telling us that even in the 

 past history of mankind the essence of the struggle for 

 existence is constituted by self-assertion, by the unscrupulous 

 seizing of all that can be kept; in short, by those qualities 

 which man " shares with the ape and the tiger." Can anyone 

 expect anything but mischief to arise from such statements? 

 Again: "The practice of that which is ethically best what 

 we call goodness or virtue involves a course of conduct which, 

 in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the 

 cosmic struggle for existence." (Italics mine.) 



This is, I believe, a great exaggeration if not an actual 

 mis-statement of the facts, as I in this and in previous books 

 claim to have shown. Prof. Bergson and various other writers 

 have already protested against the fallacies of Huxley's 

 Romanes lecture from the point of view of continuity, by 

 pointing out that there could not have been this break between 

 prehuman nature and ethical man as postulated by Huxley, 

 and likewise by pointing to the moral damage arising from his 

 emasculation of the conception of the moral ideal. 



I believe that what applies equally to the subhuman as to 

 the human world has been very aptly expressed by another 

 French writer (Joubert) thus : " C'est la force et le droit qui 

 reglent toutes choses dans le monde ; la force en attendant le 

 droit." 



It is the breaking of the law be it from inexperience, 

 ignorance or perverted instincts that causes the suffering and 

 those struggles which extreme Darwinists seem to think con- 

 stitute the all-in-all of Nature's methods. True, as we have 

 seen, the keeping of the law of progress involves in the main 

 persistence of behaviour along a narrow path. One wonders 



