130 APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 



end and means with him ; and he founds his life on 

 a more or less complete self-restraint, which is the 

 negation of the unlimited struggle for existence. 

 He tries to escape from his place in the animal 

 kingdom, founded on the free development of the 

 principle of non-moral evolution, and to establish a 

 kingdom of Man, governed upon the principle of 

 moral evolution. For society not only has a moral 

 end, but in its perfection, social life, is embodied 

 morality. 



I was once talking with a very eminent physician 1 

 about the vis medicatrix natura. "Stuff!" said he; 

 "nine times out of ten nature does not want to 

 cure the man : she wants to put him in his coffin." 



Let us look at home. For seventy years peace 

 and industry have had their way among us with 

 less interruption and under more favourable con- 

 ditions than in any other country on the face 

 of the earth. The wealth of Croesus was nothing 

 to that which we have accumulated, and our 

 prosperity has filled the world with envy. But 

 Nemesis did not forget Croesus : has she forgotten 

 us? 



Judged by an ethical standard, nothing can be 

 less satisfactory than the position in which we find 



1 The late Sir W. Gull. 



