2 24 Struggle for Existence and Rivalry 



are socially conserved and handed down, not passed on by 

 physical reproduction and heredity. So the resemblance 

 is still in part analogy. Even restricted competition is 

 not a biological fact ; in its most ironclad and * inhuman ' 

 forms it is intelligent ; intelligence unmoved by feeling 

 is its watchword. And its forms of rivalry are very 

 largely those of one master intelligence pitted against 

 another. 



Yet in this phenomenon of restricted competition we 

 have the nearest social approach to biological rivalry as 

 such ; and that in certain unaesthetic features in which 

 economic utility is the controlling end, if not the only 

 one. First among these is the opportunity it affords of 

 subordinating and destroying normal personal competi- 

 tion with its natural control by social and moral senti- 

 ment. Second, there follows, the need of state control 

 to take the place of other controls ; there would seem to 

 be no other alternative. Third, we find not only group 

 competing with group, but class organizations arrayed 

 against each other, when the closest cooperation is essen- 

 tial even for the purest economical utilities ; as of labour 

 organizations against capital, employer against employee. 

 And fourth, all are contributory to the great damage done 

 to society by the interference with personal liberty of 

 contract and choice of work under the oppressive sanc- 

 tions of the organizations, which claim to regulate economic 

 conditions. In all these respects the industrial environ- 

 ment in which modern corporate agencies operate is 

 analogous to the biological; for utility is the criterion of 

 survival, and economic utility is in many respects analo- 

 gous to biological. 



The contrast presented by the three great sorts of rivalry 



