138 UNIVERSAL EVOLUTION 



inherited from our ancestors. "He (man) punishes 

 many of the acts which flow from them as crimes; and 

 in extreme cases he does his best to put an end to the 

 survival of the fittest of former days, by axe and rope." 

 (Huxley). 



The difficulty is to put into practice the golden rule 

 ethics, in opposition to the continued struggle for 

 existence. The two principles, that of altruism and 

 that of the survival of the fittest, are struggling with 

 each other in human society. At their extremes they 

 both seem to be destructive of the bonds of society. 

 Therefore both must be kept within bounds. Altruism 

 must not be allowed to weaken the race by the perpet- 

 uation of the mentally, morally or physically weak. 

 Neither should death be courted too much in favor of 

 those who may think themselves the fittest. Man, with 

 his present limited comprehension of the cosmic method, 

 is very apt to blunder in his social laws. Hence the 

 failure of nations and civilizations in their permanency. 

 "If this world is full of pain and sorrow; if grief and 

 evil fall like rain upon both the just and unjust; it is 

 because, like the rain, they are links in the endless 

 chain of natural causation by which past, present and 

 future are indissolubly connected ; and there is no more 

 injustice in the one case than in the other." (Huxley). 



Says Karl Marx, ' ' The mode of production in material 

 life determines the general character of the social, 

 political and spiritual processes of life. It is not the 

 consciousness of men that determines their existence; 

 but, on the contrary, their social existence determines 

 their consciousness." Suppose we make a somewhat 

 different statement of this principle : The consciousness 

 of man is the product of his total environment. This 

 environment is a very complex one, but is wholly 



