Darwin's attitude towards ultimate questions 463 



great exertion of the body or mind, in the pleasure of our daily 

 meals, and especially in the pleasure derived from sociability, and 

 from loving our families." But there was to him so much suffering 

 in the world that it was a strong argument against the existence of 

 an intelligent First Cause 1 . 



It seems to me that Darwin was not so clear on another question, 

 that of the relation between improvement and adaptation. He wrote 

 to Lyell : " When you contrast natural selection and ' improvement,' 

 you seem always to overlook... that every step in the natural selection 

 of each species implies improvement in that species in relation to its 

 condition of £{/&... Improvement implies, I suppose, each form 

 obtaining many parts or organs, all excellently adapted for their 

 functions." "All this," he adds, "seems to me quite compatible with 

 certain forms fitted for simple conditions, remaining unaltered, or 

 being degraded 2 ." But the great question is, if the conditions of 

 life will in the long run favour "improvement" in the sense of 

 differentiation (or harmony of differentiation and integration). Many 

 beings are best adapted to their conditions of life if they have few 

 organs and few necessities. Pessimism would not only be the conse- 

 quence, if suffering outweighed happiness, but also if the most 

 elementary forms of happiness were predominant, or if there were 

 a tendency to reduce the standard of life to the simplest possible, the 

 contentment of inertia or stable equilibrium. There are animals 

 which are very highly differentiated and active in their young state, 

 but later lose their complex organisation and concentrate them- 

 selves on the one function of nutrition. In the human world analogies 

 to this sort of adaptation are not wanting. Young " idealists " very 

 often end as old " Philistines." Adaptation and progress are not the 

 same. 



Another question of great importance in respect to human evolu- 

 tion is, whether there will be always a possibility for the existence 

 of an impulse to progress, an impulse to make great claims on life, to 

 be active and to alter the conditions of life instead of adapting to 

 them in a passive manner. Many people do not develop because 

 they have too few necessities, and because they have no power to 

 imagine other conditions of life than those under which they live. In 

 his remarks on " the pleasure from exertion " Darwin has a point of 

 contact with the practical idealism of former times — with the ideas of 

 Lessing and Goethe, of Condorcet and Fichte. The continual striving 

 which was the condition of salvation to Faust's soul, is also the con- 

 dition of salvation to mankind. There is a holy fire which we ought 

 to keep burning, if adaptation is really to be improvement. If, as 

 I*have tried to show in my Philosophy of Religion, the innermost 



1 Life and Letters, Vol. i. p. 310. * Ibid. Vol. n. p. 177. 



