20 INTRODUCTION. 



Before this version of the tragedy, authenticated by 

 the highest names on the roll of science, humanity 

 was dumb, morality mystified, natural theology stulti- 

 fied. A truer reading may not wholly relieve the 

 first, enlighten the second, or re-instate the third. 

 But it at least re-opens the inquiry ; and when all its 

 bearings come to be perceived, the light thrown upon 

 the field of Nature by the second factor may be more 

 impressive to reason than the apparent shadow of the 

 first to sense. 



To relieve the strain of the position forced upon 

 ethics by the one-sided treatment of the process of 

 Evolution heroic attempts have been made. Some 

 have attempted to mitigate the amount of suffering it 

 involves, and assure us that, after all, the Struggle, 

 except as a metaphor, scarcely exists. " There is," 

 protests Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, " good reason to 

 believe that the supposed • torments ' and ' miseries ' 

 of animals have little real existence, but are the reflec- 

 tion of the amagined sensations of cultivated men and 

 women in similar circumstances ; and that the amount 

 of actual suffering caused by the Struggle for Exist- 

 ence among animals is altogether insignificant." 1 Mr. 

 Huxley, on the other hand, will make no compromise. 

 The Struggle for Life to him is a portentous fact, un- 

 mitigated and unexplained. No metaphors are strong 

 enough to describe the implacability of its sway. 

 " The moral indifference of nature " and " the un- 

 fathomable injustice of the nature of things " every- 

 where stare him in the face. " For his successful prog- 

 ress as far as the savage state, Man has been largely 

 indebted to those qualities which he shares with the 

 1 Darwinism, p. 37. • ' 



