COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



ure in the ever-renewed strife between good and 

 evil inclinations. So penetrated are the noblest 

 careers by the leaven of selfish folly, that the con- 

 scientious biographer is too often constrained to 

 adopt the tone of apology, mingling condem- 

 nation with approval. Side by side with deeds 

 of heroism and sympathetic devotion, history is 

 ev^r recording deeds of violence and selfish op- 

 pression. Undisciplined and conflicting desires 

 are continually coming to fruition in hateful and 

 iniquitous actions. The perennial recurrence 

 of war and persecution, the obstinate vitality of 

 such ugly things as despotism, superstition, 

 fraud, robbery, treachery, and bigotry, show 

 how chaotic as yet is the distribution of moral 

 forces. While the prevalence, here and there, 

 of ignorance and poverty, disease and famine, 

 shows how imperfect as yet is our power to 

 adapt ourselves to the changes going on around 

 us. 



That this state of things is temporarily ne- 

 cessitated by the physical constitution of the 

 universe and by the process of evolution itself, 

 may readily be granted.^ The physical ills with 



^ In treating of the special creation hypothesis (^Principles 

 of Bio logy y Part III.) Mr. Spencer calls attention to the nu- 

 merous cases in which the higher life is sacrificed, without 

 compensation, to the lower, as for example in the case of 

 parasites. This is a formidable objection, not only to the doc- 

 trine of special creations, but to anthropomorphic theism in 

 220 



