THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES, hb 



fact — which has not yet been alluded to — that as 

 Evolution proceeds the one Struggle waxes, and the other 

 wanes, would it not be wiser to study the drama 

 nearer its denouement before deciding whether it was 

 a moral, a non-moral, or an immoral play ? 



Lest the alleged loaning of the Struggle for Life 

 convey a wrong impression, let it be added that of 

 course the word is to be taken qualitatively. The 

 Struggle in itself can never cease. What ceases is its 

 so-called anti-ethical character. For nothing is in 

 finer evidence as we rise in the scale of life than the 

 gradual tempering of the Struggle for Life. Its slow 

 amelioration is the work of ages, may be the work of 

 ages still, but its animal qualities in the social life of 

 Man are being surely left behind ; and though the 

 mark of the savage and the brute still mar its handi- 

 work, these harsher qualities must pass away. In that 

 new social order which the gathering might of the 

 altruistic spirit is creating now around us, in that 

 reign of Love which must one day, if the course of 

 Evolution holds on its way, be realized, the baser 

 elements will find that solvent prepared for them from 

 the beginning in anticipation of a higher rule on earth. 

 Interpreting the course of Evolution scientifically, 

 whether from its starting-point in the first protoplasm, 

 or from the rallying-point of its two great forces in the 

 social organism of to-day, it becomes more and more 

 certain that only from the commingled achievement of 

 both can the nature of the process be truly judged. 

 Yet, as one sees the one sun set, and the other rise 

 with a splendor the more astonishing and bewildering 

 as the centuries roll on, it is impossible to withhold a 

 verdict as to which may be most reasonably looked 



