EVOLUTION AND SOCIOLOGY 55 



because they are so open, that all phenomena 

 displayed by a nation are phenomena of Life, and 

 are dependent on the laws of Life," we cannot 

 devote ourselves to study those laws too earnestly 

 or too soon. From the failure to get at the heart 

 of the first principles of Evolution the old call to 

 " follow Nature " has all but become a heresy. 

 Nature, as a moral teacher, thanks to the Dar- 

 winian interpretation, was never more discredited 

 than at this hour ; and friend and foe alike agree 

 in warning us against her. But a further reading 

 of Nature may decide not that we must discharge 

 the teacher but beg her mutinous pupils to try 

 another term at school. With Nature studied in 

 the light of a true biology, or even in the sense 

 in which the Stoics themselves employed their 

 favourite phrase, it must become once more the 

 watchword of personal and social progress. With 

 Mr. Huxley's definition of what the Stoics meant 

 by Nature as " that which holds up the ideal of 

 the supreme good and demands absolute submission 

 of the will to its behests , . . which commands 

 all men to love one another, to return good for 

 evil, to regard one another as citizens of one great 

 state," ^ the phrase, " Live according to Nature," so 

 far from having no application to the modern world 

 * Evolution and Ethics ^ p. 27. 



