The Theory of Evolution 33 



the basis of the accepted natural rights that the 

 commercial point of view had developed — of 

 personal liberty, of dependence on contract, 

 of the pursuit of wealth, of unrestricted prop- 

 erty rights — there must necessarily come 

 about a balance of the conflicting economic 

 forces, with a resulting setting of prices and 

 distribution of wealth. As a mere physical 

 principle, if several forces acting in opposite 

 directions are brought into play in the same 

 field, they must necessarily unify into one defi- 

 nite tendency. So in the market the bargain- 

 ing aggression of each individual merges into 

 other similar forces by what may be called a 

 natural law; though, as a matter of fact, the 

 natural law is nothing more than the state- 

 ment in general terms of the result. There is 

 evoked no transcendent principle to safeguard 

 justice except the questionable one that eco- 

 nomic might makes right. The factory lord, 

 on the basis of commercial contract, exploited 

 the masses of a century ago more mercilessly 

 than had his predecessor of feudalism, yet he 

 was absolved from guilt because he was follow- 

 ing a natural law — the law, forsooth, that a 

 man takes all the gain he can get. And to 

 question the validity of the natural law was 



