DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 



survival of the fittest," or " the__JiiiiAcent 

 priv ate war, which makes one man striv e to 

 climb on the should ers of anoth er." 1 This talk 

 of beneficence " is itself but a survival, not of 

 the fittest, but of the " theological " belief in a 

 God who wills the happiness of his creatures 

 the attenuated creed of the English Deists or 

 of the "metaphysical" belief in a Nature which, 

 if only leff- to itself, lends f o better results t han 

 can be secured by any interference of man. 

 That was the type of thinking in the days of 

 Rousseau and Adam Smith : and our evolu- 

 tionary enthusiasts, when they talk of benefi- 

 cence, are, after all, but repeating the creed of 

 the despised eighteenth century, or else they 

 are only disguising under a hypocritical phrase 

 the triumphant crowing of the successful fight- 

 ing-cock, aloft on his own dung-heap, while his 

 vanquished opponent slinks away battered and 

 bleeding. From natural selection there have 

 resulted wonderful adaptations, but how much 

 of suffering by the way, how much of horrid 

 cruelty in these adaptations themselves ? The 

 great Darwin himself speaks in a very different 



1 II. Spencer, Tfie Man versus the State, p. 69; Maine, 



Popular Government, p. 50. 



