SOME ASPECTS OF ZOOLOGY 57 



in obtaining control over himself. Hence the grave dis- 

 harmony that we see in social and international affairs, and 

 are experiencing so acutely at this moment. 



Both the authors of the doctrine of Natural Selection and 

 their followers have realised full} 7 this aspect of their teaching, 

 and have sought to justify the evident evil said to be inherent 

 in Nature by such considerations as those given in the sentence 

 quoted from Darwin. Wallace deals with the question in 

 much the same way and at much greater length. 



None the less there remains the appalling verdict that it 

 is through war, famine and death that the highest organisms 

 are evolved. It is evident that this justification fails in its 

 application to man. If it be the case, as it undoubtedly is 

 in large (but not in whole) measure owing to their preying 

 upon one another, that animals have been evolved through 

 the operation of internecine warfare, we may, from an ethical 

 point of view, regard the fact with equanimity. Our moral 

 sense is not shocked by the statement that in the brute 

 creation a very high ratio of increase is a favourable adapta- 

 tion, enabling a species to maintain its average numbers in 

 the presence of a host of enemies. There is a vast sacrifice of 

 individuals for the benefit of the race, but the sacrifice falls 

 chiefly on the young and scarcely sentient forms, and even 

 the adult individuals have not the apprehension of death, the 

 acute sense of pain, or the feelings of compassion and sympathy 

 which in ourselves render the holocaust so shocking. 



We do not imagine that there are philosophers among 

 fishes or rabbits to lament over the misfortunes of their kind. 

 Therefore we find no cause for offence in the zoological 

 doctrine that the race is all-important, the individual matters 

 nothing. 



But with mankind the case is very different. The faculty 

 of reason by which he transcends the beasts is an individual 

 faculty. It is the self-conscious Ego that hopes and fears, 

 that mourns or is glad, is contented or discontented, happy 

 or miserable. The well-being or misery of a nation is not 

 collective, but the sum of the individual happiness or misery 

 of the individuals composing it. 



