SUGGESTIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 523 



irrational conflict (of the past, in great part), in- 

 cluding massacres, homicides, brigandage, slavery, 

 persecution, etc., from the more rapid and rational 

 conflict (of the future) which is competitive and 

 argumentative. There is a gradual elimination of 

 certain forms of conflict ; even in war all destructive 

 devices are no longer considered fair. The most 

 difficult of social dilemmas is, that if the cruder 

 forms of struggle be too mercifully relaxed there is 

 apt to be an undue multiplication of the unfit, who, 

 in sterner conditions, would have gone under, 

 while, on the other hand, a persistence of the lower 

 forms of struggle is apt to be prejudicial to the de- 

 velopment of genius and of art, and other flowers of 

 civilisation. 



To sum up : even those who agree with Schaffle, for 

 instance, that " all processes of social development 

 are subject to the law of natural selection," or go the 

 length of saying with him that " the law of the sur- 

 vival of the fittest is the only clear formula for a 

 moral order of the world," must in clearness admit 

 that when all is said and done selection is only the 

 knife which prunes the tree ; it directs but does not 

 originate the vital impulse, the persistent growth, the 

 new initiative. And, furthermore, while the logical 

 form of the selection theory remains the same, a real 

 and practical difference did ensue when man became 

 conscious, if not master, of his fate, and began, as 

 it were, to swim in the current in which he found 

 himself floating. 



Isolation. A general survey of racial evolution 

 discloses two directly opposite processes : on the one 

 hand, (a) dispersion, expansion, with (it may be) re- 

 sulting differentiation as isolation became more 

 marked; and, on the other hand, (l>) consolidation, 



