DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 61 



forms of nature, not the lower, so as to contrive 

 some scheme for the diminution of waste ? 



Strauss is afraid, because of the interests of 

 civilisation. But the civilisation he thinks of is | 

 that of the antique type of society, a civilisation 

 limited to the few a cultured minority, consol- 

 ing themselves for the loss of old religious beliefs 

 by reading poetry and hearing concerts and 

 operas, amid a subject-multitude treated with 

 some consideration, like dependent and useful 

 lower animals, but left to poverty and supersti- 

 tion. What can be worse for civilisation than 

 that the more energetic and successful workers, 

 managing to get constant employment, have, as 

 at present, no sufficient leisure for the cultiva- 

 tion of their faculties ? And when in the case 

 of the greatest number all available energy is 

 used up in the struggle to feed the body, what 

 wonder that the soul is neglected " where a 

 soul can be discerned " ? Leisure is necessary 

 for culture : and a moderate amount of work is 

 good for physical, mental and moral health 

 excess is bad for all three. Cannot leisure and 

 work be better distributed, according to a 

 rational instead of a hap-hazard system ? In 

 the attempt to substitute rational for non- 



