462 Evolution and Modern Philosophy 



criticism, which in recent years has often been directed against 

 Darwin — that small variations are of no importance in the struggle 

 for life — is of no weight. From an ethical standpoint, and particularly 

 from the ethical standpoint of Darwin himself, it is a duty to foster 

 individual differences that can be valuable, even though they can 

 neither be of service for physical preservation nor be physically 

 inherited. The distinction between variation and mutation is here 

 without importance. It is quite natural that biologists should be 

 particularly interested in such variations as can be inherited and 

 produce new species. But in the human world there is not only a 

 physical, but also a mental and social heredity. When an ideal 

 human character has taken form, then there is shaped a type, which 

 through imitation and influence can become an important factor in 

 subsequent development, even if it cannot form a species in the 

 biological sense of the word. Spiritually strong men often succumb in 

 the physical struggle for life ; but they can nevertheless be victorious 

 through the typical influence they exert, perhaps on very distant genera- 

 tions, if the remembrance of them is kept alive, be it in legendary or 

 in historical form. Their very failure can show that a type has taken 

 form which is maintained at all risks, a standard of life which is 

 adhered to in spite of the strongest opposition. The question "to 

 be or not to be " can be put from very different levels of being : it 

 has too often been considered a consequence of Darwinism that this 

 question is only to be put from the lowest level. When a stage is 

 reached, where ideal (ethical, intellectual, aesthetic) interests are 

 concerned, the struggle for life is a struggle for the preservation of 

 this stage. The giving up of a higher standard of life is a sort of 

 death ; for there is not only a physical, there is also a spiritual, 

 death. 



VI. 



The Socratic character of Darwin's mind appears in his wariness 

 in drawing the last consequences of his doctrine, in contrast both 

 with the audacious theories of so many of his followers and with the 

 consequences which his antagonists were busy in drawing. Though 

 he, as we have seen, saw from the beginning that his hypothesis 

 would occasion "a whole of metaphysics," he was himself very 

 reserved as to the ultimate questions, and his answers to such 

 questions were extorted from him. 



As to the question of optimism and pessimism, Darwin held that 

 though pain and suffering were very often the ways by which animals 

 were led to pursue that course of action which is most beneficial to 

 the species, yet pleasurable feelings were the most habitual guides. 

 "We see this in the pleasure from exertion, even occasionally from 



