COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



checked. In the highly complex societies which 

 we call civilized, division of labour and cooper- 

 ation have done much to obscure the effects 

 of this agency. From the cooperation which 

 goes on to a greater or less extent in all socie- 

 ties, and from the enormous heterogeneity of 

 man's psychical organization, itfollows that there 

 are innumerable circumstances which may en- 

 able individual men to survive, in spite of their 

 falling considerably short of the normal stand- 

 ard of the community and the age to which they 

 belong. This fact, as will hereafter appear, ren- 

 ders it possible for man to have an ideal stand- 

 ard of excellence or successfulness in life, and 

 is closely associated with the genesis of the ethi- 

 cal feelings of approval and disapproval. 



But while natural selection among individuals 

 grows somewhat less rigorous, its effects upon 

 rival or antagonist societies are in no wise dimin- 

 ished in their beneficent severity. The attri- 

 butes which tend to make a society strong and 

 durable with reference to surrounding societies 

 are the attributes which natural selection will 

 chiefly preserve. As Mr. Wallace has pointed 

 out : " Capacity for acting in concert for pro- 

 tection, and for the acquisition of food and shel- 

 ter ; sympathy, which leads all in turn to assist 

 each other ; the sense of right, which checks 

 depredations upon our fellows ; . . . self-re- 

 straint in present appetites ; and that intelligent 



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