EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS. 501 



Free Contract/' respectively indicating various cases in which the 

 restraints imposed by law must be supplemented by self-restraints, 

 and instancing one of the excesses committed under free competition 

 as amounting to " commercial murder." Chapters enjoining further 

 self-restraints for the benefit of others are followed, in the division 

 on Positive Beneficence, by chapters enjoining efforts on their be- 

 half, and the duty which falls on the superior of mitigating the evils 

 which the inferior have to bear. After dealing, in a chapter on 

 "Kelief of the Poor," with the evils often caused by attempts to 

 diminish distress, it is contended that philanthropic duty should be 

 performed not by proxy, but directly; and that each person of 

 means ought to see to the welfare of the particular cluster of inferiors 

 with whom his circumstances put him in relation. The general 

 nature of the doctrine set forth may be inferred from two sentences 

 in the closing chapter: 



" The highest beneficence is that which is not only prepared, if 

 need be, to sacrifice egoistic pleasures, but is also prepared, if need 

 be, to sacrifice altruistic pleasures." 474. 



And then, speaking of the natures which " the ethical process " is in 

 course of producing, it is said that 



" in such natures a large part of the mental life must result from par- 

 ticipation in the mental lives of others." 475. 



I do not see how there could be expressed ideas more diametrically 

 opposed to that brutal individualism which some persons ascribe 

 to me. 



It remains only to say that Prof. Huxley's attack upon the doc- 

 trines of Ravachol & Co. has my hearty approval, though I do not 

 quite see the need for it. Evidently it is intended for the extreme 

 anarchists; or, at least, I know of no others against whom his argu- 

 ments tell. It has been absurdly supposed that his lecture was, in 

 part, an indirect criticism upon theories held by me. But this can- 

 not be. It is scarcely supposable that he deliberately undertook to 

 teach me my own doctrines, enunciated some of them forty-odd years 

 ago. Passing over the historical and metaphysical parts of his lec- 

 ture, his theses are those for which I have always contended. We 

 agree that the process of evolution must reach a limit, after which 

 a reverse change must begin (First Principles, chaps. " Equilibra- 

 tion " and " Dissolution "). We agree that the survival of the 

 fittest is often not survival of the best. We agree in denouncing the 

 brutal form of the struggle for existence. We agree that the ethical 



