April 26, 1888] 



NA TURE 



621 



labour. Further-seeing men spend their whole lives on work 

 little remunerative that succeeding generations may be 

 benefited. The prudent man transmits health and wealth to 

 his descendants, the improvident man poverty or gout. One 

 main element of what we call civilization is the capability of 

 looking further back into the past, and further forward into the 

 future ; but, though measured on a different scale, the average 

 antagonism and approximate equivalence appear to me to be 

 the same. 



Can we suppose a state of things either in the inorganic or the 

 organic world which, consistently with our experience or any 

 deduction drawn from it, would be without antagonism ? In the 

 inorganic world it would be the absence of all movement, or, wliat 

 practically amounts to the same thing, movement of everything 

 in the same direction, and the same relative velocity ; for, as 

 movement is only known to us by relation, movement where 

 nothing is stationary or moving in a different direction or with a 

 different velocity would be unrecognizable. 



So in the organic but non-sentient w orld, if there were no 

 no struggle, no absorption of food, no growth, nothing to over- 

 come, there would be nothing to call life. If, again, in the 

 sentient world there were no appetites, no hopes — for both these 

 involve discontent— no fear, no good or bad, what would life be ? 

 If fully carried out, is not a life without antagonism no life at all, 

 a barren metaphysical conception of existence, or rather alleged 

 conception, for we cannot present to the mind the form of such 

 conception ? 



In the most ordinary actions, such as are necessary to sustain 

 existence, we find, as 1 have already pointed out, a struggle more 

 or less intense, but we also find a reciprocal interdependence of 

 effort and result. The graminivorous animal is during his waking 

 hours always at work, always making a small but continuous 

 effort, selecting his pastures, cropping vegetables, avoiding 

 enemies, &c. The Carnivora suffer more in their normal existence; 

 their hunger is greater, and their physical exertion when they are 

 driven by hunger to make efforts to obtain food is more violent 

 than with the Herbivora, if they capture their prey by speed or 

 battle, or their mental efforts are greater if they capture it by 

 craft. But then their gratification is also more intense, and thus 

 there is a sort of rough equation between their pain and their 

 pleasure, the more sustained the labour the more permanent is 

 the gratification. 



As, with food or exercise, deficiency is as injurious in one as is 

 excess in another direction, so, as affecting the mind of communi- 

 ties, as I have stated it'to be with individuals, the effect of a life 

 of ease and too much repose is as much to be avoided as a life 

 of unremitting toil. The Pitcairn islanders, who managed in 

 some way to adapt their wants to their supply and to avoid undue 

 increase of population, are said never to have reached old age. 

 In consequence of the uneventful, unexcited lives they led, they 

 died of inaction, not from deficiency of food or shelter, but of 

 excitement. They should have migrated to England ! They 

 died as hares do when their ears are stuffed with cotton, i.e. from 

 want of anxiety. We have hope in our suffering, and in the mid 

 gush of our pleasures something bitter surges up. 



" We look before and after, and pine for what is not. 

 Our f incerest laughter with some pain is fraught, 

 Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought." 



The question may possibly occur to you, Have we more or less 

 antagonism now than in former times? We certainly have more 

 complexity, more differentiation, in our mental characteristics, 

 and probably in our physical, so far as the structure of the brain 

 is concerned ; but is there less antagonism ? With greater com- 

 plexity come increased wants, more continuous cares. Higher 

 cerebral development is accompanied with greater nervous 

 irritability, with greater social intricacies — we have more frequent 

 petty annoyances, and they affect us more. With all our so- 

 called social improvements, is there not the same struggle between 

 crime and its repression ? If we have no longer highway 

 robberies, how many more cases of fraud exist, most of it not 

 touched by our criminal laws ? As to litigation I am perhaps not 

 an impartial judge, but it seems to me that if law were as cheap 

 as is desired, every next-door neighbour would be in 

 litigation. It would seem as if social order had never 

 more than the turn of the scale which is necessary to 

 social existence in its favour when contrasted with the dis- 

 organizing forces. Without that there would be perpetual 

 insurrections and anarchy. But though antagonism takes a 

 different form it is still there. Are wars more regulated by 

 justice than of yore ? I venture to doubt it, though probably 



many may disagree with me. National self-interest or self-ag- 

 grandisement is, I think, the predominant factor, and is frequently 

 admittedly so. I also doubt if the old maxim " If you wish for 

 peace, prepare for war," is of much value. Large armaments 

 and improvements in the means of destruction (whose inventors 

 are more thought of than the discoverers of natural truths) are 

 as frequently the cause of war as of its prevention. Are wars 

 less sanguinary with 100-ton guns than with bows and arrows ? 

 I cannot enter into statistics on this subject, but a sensible writer 

 who has, viz. Mr. Finlaison, came to the conclusion that wars 

 ceased now as anciently, not in the ratio of the improvements in 

 killing implements, but from exhaustion of men or means. Wars 

 undoubtedly occur at more distant intervals, or the human race 

 would become extinct. Probably the largely increased competi- 

 tion supplies their place : we fight commercially more and 

 militarily less. It is a sad reflection that man is almost the only 

 animal that fights, not for food or means of life or of perpetuating 

 its race, but from motives of the merest vanity, ambition, or 

 pasFion. War is, however, not wholly evil. It develops 

 noble qualities — courage, endurance, self-sacrifice, friendship, 

 &c. — and tends to get rid of the silly incumbrances of fashion 

 and ostentation. But do the much be-praised inventions of peace 

 bring less antagonism? Consider the enormous labour and 

 waste of time due to competition in the advertizing system alone. 

 Paper-making, type founding, printing, pasting, posting or 

 otherwise circulating, sandwich-men, &c., all at work for 

 purposes which I venture to think are in great part u'^ele.'s ; and 

 those who might add to the productiveness of the earth, or to 

 the enriching our knowledge, are helping to extend the limits of 

 the black country, and wasting their time in interested self- 

 laudation. And the consumer pays the costs. " Buy my clothing, 

 which will never wear out." " Become a shareholder in our 

 Com.pany, which will pay cent, per cent. "•>" Take my pills, which 

 will cure all diseases," &c. These eulogies come from those 

 highly impartial persons the advertisers, all promising golden 

 rewards, but, as with the alchemists, on condition that gold be 

 paid in advance for their wares ; and the silly portion of the public, 

 no small body, take them at their word. Though you may not 

 fully agree in this my anathema of the advertising system, and 

 though there may be some small modicum of good in it, I think 

 you will agree that it affords a notable illustration of antagonism. 

 If I were a younger man, I think I should go to Kamchatka to 

 aVoid the penny post ; possibly I should not be satisfied when I 

 got there. Civilization begins by supplying wants, and ends by 

 creating them, and each supply for the newly-created want begets 

 other wants, and so on ^' Mies quoties," 



As far as we can judge by its present progress, mankind seems 

 tending to an automatic state. The requirements of each day are 

 becoming so numerous as to occupy the greater portion of that 

 day ; and when telegrams, telephones, electro-motion, and 

 numerous other innovations which will probably follow these, 

 reach their full development, no time will be left for thought, 

 repose, or any spontaneous individual action. In this mechani- 

 cal state of existence, in times of peace, extremes of joy and sorrow, 

 of good and evil, will become more rare, and the necessary uni- 

 formity of life will reduce passion and feeling to a continuous 

 petty friction. The converse of the existence contemplated by the 

 Stoics will be attained, and, instead of a life of calm contempla- 

 tion, our successors will have a life of objectless activity. The end 

 will be swallowed up in the means. It will be all pursuit and no 

 attainment. Is there 2i Juste milieu, a point at which the super- 

 fluous commoda vitce will cease ? None probably would agree at 

 where that point should be fixed, and the future alone can show 

 whether the human race will emancipate itself from being, like 

 Frankenstein, the slave of the monster it has created. In the 

 cases I have given as illustrations — and many more might be 

 adduced — the evil resulting from apparently beneficial changes 

 is not a mere accident : it is as necessary a consequence as re- 

 action is a consequence of action. In the struggle for existence 

 or supremacy, inevitable in all social growths, the invention, 

 enactment, &c., intended to remedy an assumed evil will be 

 taken advantage of by those for whom it is not intended ; the 

 real grievance will be exaggerated by those having an interest in 

 trading on it, and the remedy itself will have collateral results 

 not contemplated by those who introduce the change. I could 

 give many instances of this by my own experience as an advo- 

 cate and judge, but this would lead me away from my subject. 

 Evils, indeed, result from the very change of habit induced by 

 the alleged improvement. The carriage which saves fatigue 

 induces listnessness, and tends to prevent healthy exercise. The 

 knife and fork save the labour of mastication, but by their use 



