304. THE ISSUES OF LIFE 



reactions and responses to environing difficulties and limi- 

 tations. 



Thus the nightmare picture of the Struggle for Exist- 

 ence as " a dismal cockpit " gives place to a more accurate 

 one. It is often an Endeavour after Well-being on a non- 

 competitive basis. We see reason to regard as inaccurate 

 the conception of Animate Nature as " all weather ". 



We must not allow interests other than those of accuracy 

 and consistency to intrude in scientific inquiry, but the fact 

 must be pointed out that vague views of what obtains in 

 Nature have had a deplorable influence in human affairs. 

 What was at first said almost in jest, " The struggle for 

 existence laissez faire the survival of the fittest ", has 

 become to some a philosophy of life. There has been a sin- 

 ister effect of careless Darwinism. As has been well said, 

 " It has given the seeming sanction of science at one time 

 to a soulless commercialism, at another to an overweening 

 pride of race and the lust of dominion. By one of the par- 

 adoxes to which the history of thought is prone, the theory 

 of progress has been in the main a weapon in the hands 

 of intellectual and moral reaction. But every new theory 

 has to go through its infantile diseases. The worst of these 

 arises from that distemper of the mind, peculiarly prevalent 

 in the half-educated world of modern thought, which prompts 

 men to pick up ideas which specialists have elaborated for 

 their own purposes in their own departments and apply them 

 indiscriminately as catchwords to settle questions arising in 

 another sphere." 



What is fallacious in the careless Darwinism alluded to? 

 There is: (1) a narrow and wooden conception of the 

 Struggle for Existence which includes many endeavours that 

 are not directly competitive at all; (2) a failure to perceive 



