226 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



vival of the fittest," things so at least some of us may think 

 would have been worse. But such fancies have nothing to do 

 with scientific inquiries. "We have to take things as they are, and 

 make the best of them. 



The common feeling, no doubt, is different. The incessant 

 struggle between different races suggests a painful view of the 

 universe, as Hobbes's natural state of war suggested painful 

 theories as to human nature. War is evidently immoral, we 

 think ; and a doctrine which makes the whole process of evolu- 

 tion a process of war must be radically immoral too. The strug- 

 gle, it is said, demands " ruthless self-assertion/' and the hunting 

 down of all competitors ; and such phrases certainly have an un- 

 pleasant sound. But, in the first place, the use of the epithets 

 implies an anthropomorphism to which we have no right so long 

 as we are dealing with the inferior species. We are then in a re- 

 gion to which moral ideas have no direct application, and where 

 the moral sentiments exist only in germ, if they can properly be 

 said to exist at all. Is it fair to call a wolf " ruthless " because it 

 eats a sheep and fails to consider the transaction from the sheep's 

 point of view ? We must surely admit that if the wolf is without 

 mercy he is also without malice. We call an animal ferocious 

 because a man who acted in the same way would be ferocious. 

 But the man is really ferocious because he is really aware of the 

 pain which he inflicts. The wolf, I suppose, has no more recog- 

 nition of the sheep's feelings than a man has of feelings in the 

 oyster or the potato. For him, they are simply non-existent ; and 

 it is just as inappropriate to think of the wolf as cruel as it would 

 be to call the sheep cruel for eating grass. Are we, then, to say that 

 " Nature " is cruel because the arrangement increases the sum of 

 general suffering ? That is a problem which I do not feel able to 

 answer ; but it is at least obvious that it can not be answered off- 

 hand in the affirmative. To the individual sheep it matters noth- 

 ing whether he is eaten by the wolf or dies of disease or starvation. 

 He has to die anyway, and the particular way is unimportant. 

 The wolf is simply one of the limiting forces upon sheep, and, if 

 he were removed, others would come into play. The sheep, left 

 to himself, would still have a practical illustration of the doctrine 

 of Malthus. If, as evolutionists tell us, the hostility of the wolf 

 tends to improve the breed of sheep, to encourage him to climb 

 better and to sharpen his wits, the sheep may be, on the whole, 

 the better for the wolf : in this sense, at least, thus the sheep of a 

 wolfless region might lead a more wretched existence, and be less 

 capable animals and more subject to disease and starvation than 

 the sheep in a wolf -haunted region. The wolf may, so far, be a 

 blessing in disguise. 



This suggests another obvious remark. When we speak of the 



