MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES 31 



cross-classification which does justice to neither half 

 of Nature. 



The consternation caused by Mr. Huxley's change 

 of front, or supposed change of front, is matter of 

 recent history. Mr. Leslie Stephen and Mr. Her- 

 bert Spencer hastened to protest ; the older school 

 of moralists hailed it almost as a conversion. But 

 the one fact everywhere apparent throughout the 

 discussion is that neither side apprehended either 

 the ultimate nature or the true solution of the 

 problem. The seat of the disorder is the same 

 in both attackers and attacked — the one-sided view 

 of Nature. Universally Nature, as far as the plant, 

 animal, and savage levels, is taken to be synony- 

 mous with the Struggle for Life. Darwinism held 

 the monopoly of that lower region, and Darwinism 

 revenged itself in a manner which has at least 

 shown the inadequacy of the most widely accepted 

 premise of recent science. 



That Mr. Huxley has misgivings on the matter 

 himself is apparent from his Notes. " Of course," 

 he remarks, in reference to the technical point, 

 " strictly speaking, social life and the ethical pro- 

 cess, in virtue of which it advances towards perfec- 

 tion, are part and parcel of the general process of 

 Evolution."^ And he gets a momentary glimpse 

 * Evolution and Ethics^ note 19. 



