DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 



explain how certain ideas come to obtain that 

 relatively fixed and definite character which 

 belongs, for instance, to the moral principles 

 currently accepted within a community at any 

 given time. Thus such ideas as patriotism, 

 respect of human life as such, self-control in 

 regard to the bodily appetites, have won their 

 way so as to become factors in the struggle and 

 to conflict with the operation of natural selection 

 as this prevails among the mere animals. Why 

 then may not such ideas as Equality^ and 

 Frate rnity claim to have a fair chance i n the 

 stru ggle for ex isp nee ? If they can win posses- j 

 sion of more and more minds in the world, \ 

 the^ jivill become actual influences on cond uct V 

 and will from being mere ideals tend to bri ng ! 

 about t heir own realisation, 1 " Opinions," said^ 

 Lord Palmerston, "are stronger than armies." 

 One of the first conditions of any institution 

 being altered is that people should come to 

 imagine it as altered. The great difficulty of 

 the reformer is to get people to exert their 

 imagination to that extent. 



Now what does all this amount to except to 



1 Cp. Fouillee, La Science Sociale Contettiporaine, p xii., 

 etc. 



