THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE 271 



without reflecting on this quahtative change, would 

 govern Society by the merely animal Struggle ; 

 those who claim for this the sanction of Nature, 

 and lay down the principle of selfishness as the 

 eternally working law. The eternal law, as we 

 shall presently see, is unselfishness. But even the 

 selfishness of early Nature loses its sting with time ; 

 the self that is in it becomes a higher self; and 

 the world in which it acts is so much a better 

 world that if self gave full rein to the animal it 

 would be instantly extinguished. 



The amelioration of the Struggle for Life is 

 the most certain prophecy of Science. If this 

 universe is a moral universe, it was a necessity 

 that sooner or later this conflict should abate, that 

 in the course of Evolution this particular change 

 should come, that there should be put into the very 

 machinery of Nature that which should bring it 

 about. And what do we find? We find the Animal 

 side of the Struggle for Life attacked in such 

 directions, and with such weapons, that its defeat 

 is sure. These weapons are in the armoury of 

 Nature ; they have been there from the begin- 

 ning ; and they are now engaged upon the enemy 

 so hotly and so openly that we can discover 

 what some of them are. The first is one which 

 has begun to mine the Struggle for Life at its 



