28o THE ASCENT OF MAN 



Structure which included the whole vast range of 

 life — vegetal, animal, social — based on a law which 

 explained but half the facts, and was only relevant, 

 in the crude form in which it was universally stated, 

 for the childhood of the world. It was impossible 

 for such an edifice to stand. Natural history cannot 

 in any case cover the whole facts of human history, 

 and, so interpreted, can only fatally distort them. 

 The mistake had been largely qualified had Mr. 

 Darwin's followers even accepted his foundation 

 in its first integrity ; but, perhaps because the 

 author of the theory himself but dimly apprehended 

 the complement of his thesis, few seem to have 

 perceived that anything was amiss. Mr. Darwin's 

 sagacity led him distinctly to foresee that narrow 

 interpretations of his great phrase " Struggle for 

 Existence" were certain to be made; and in the 

 opening chapters of the Origin of Species^ he 

 warns us that the term must be applied in its 

 " large and metaphorical sense, including depend- 

 ence of one being on another, and including (which 

 is more important) not only the life of the individual, 

 but success in leaving progeny." ^ In spite of this 

 warning, his overmastering emphasis on the individ- 

 ual Struggle for Existence seems to have obscured, 

 if not to his own mind, certainly to almost all his 

 ' Origin of Species^ 6th edition, p. 50. 



