xvi INTRODUCTION 



to be thought of (the conception is set out more fully in 

 Chapter I.) as a sort of glorified reflex action. Cunningly 

 constructed as it was, it had no special significance in the 

 evolutionary scheme, and though it made man for a time 

 the dominant animal, yet the ultimate goal of its efforts 

 would be to establish an equilibrium which would prove, as 

 Mr. Spencer candidly admitted, the first stage of decay. 

 The Genus Homo had its place in geological time like other 

 genera, and like them would pass away, only unlike them its 

 fossil remains would never become a theme for the anti- 

 quary, because in the cooling of the earth there would be 

 no antiquarians. The teeming life of the world must 

 gradually disappear and give place in time to the primordial 

 silence. 



The appearance of an upward process in evolution then 

 was illusory. It was due to the position of the human 

 observer, who could not clearly see beyond the segment of 

 the whole curve on which he himself happened to be placed. 

 This result was more fatally apparent when the conditions 

 of evolution were taken into account, and these bring us to 

 the second point at which the theory affected human life and 

 action. So far as there was anything like progress, it was 

 due to the internecine struggle for existence. But a little 

 reflection suffices to show that if progress means anything 

 which human beings can value or desire, it depends on the 

 suppression of the struggle for existence, and the substitu- 

 tion in one form or another of social co-operation. There 

 was here a conflict between the scientific and the ethical 

 points of view which threatened social ethics with extinc- 

 tion. The contradiction was masked indeed for Mr. 

 Spencer by his theory of the inheritance of acquired 

 qualities, and it was not until Weismann insisted on the 

 all-sufficiency of natural selection that it assumed its 

 extremer form. But the social implications of natural 



