26 INTRODUCTION 



when all its bearings come to be perceived, the light 

 thrown upon the field of Nature by the second 

 factor may be more impressive to reason than the 

 apparent shadow of the first to sense. 



To relieve the strain of the position forced 

 upon ethics by the one-sided treatment of the pro- 

 cess of Evolution, heroic attempts have been made. 

 Some have attempted to mitigate the amount of 

 suffering it involves, and assure us that, after 

 all, the Struggle, except as a metaphor, scarcely 

 exists. "There is," protests Mr. Alfred Russel 

 Wallace, '* good reason to believe . . . that the 

 supposed * torments ' and * miseries ' of animals have 

 little real existence, but are the reflection of the 

 imagined sensations of cultivated men and women in 

 similar circumstances ; and that the amount of 

 actual suffering caused by the Struggle for Exist- 

 ence among animals is altogether insignificant." ^ 

 Mr. Huxley, on the other hand, will make no 

 compromise. The Struggle for Life to him is a 

 portentous fact, unmitigated and unexplained. No 

 metaphors are strong enough to describe the im- 

 placability of its sway. " The moral indifference of 

 nature " and " the unfathomable injustice of the 

 nature of things " everywhere stare him in the face. 

 " For his successful progress, as far as the savage 

 ^ Darwinism^ p. 37. 



 



