LIMITS OF THE PROGRESSIVE STRUGGLE 147 



again, in this country has not triumphed over pro- Book n 

 tectionism, because the mass of free-traders have 

 exterminated the mass of protectionists. It has 

 triumphed simply because, in the eyes of the 

 majority, one school of theorists has succeeded in 

 discrediting another. 



Now these facts, which, when once stated, are so i n the pro- 

 obvious, not only throw the Darwinian struggle for struggle 



i i 111 i between great 



existence altogether into the background as an men> the mass 



agent in social progress, but they show that it pre- 



sents us with no true analogy to that kind of struggle pl ^ y no part 



& J o& whatever. 



from which progress principally results. They 

 show us, on the contrary, that the struggle which 

 produces social progress, though it resembles the 

 Darwinian struggle in one point, is in all other points 

 contrasted with it. The struggle of one employer 

 against another to direct labour in the most ad- 

 vantageous way, or the struggle of one politician or 

 religious teacher against another to secure for his 

 own views the largest number of adherents, is so 

 far like the Darwinian struggle for existence, that it 

 is a struggle in which individual is pitted against 

 individual, and the gain of the successful is the loss 

 of the unsuccessful. But the limits within which 

 this struggle is confined are very narrow indeed ; 

 and the mass of the community takes no part in it 

 whatsoever. 



In order to show this with the utmost clearness 

 possible, let us turn again to the domain of economic 

 progress, which generally supplies the sociologist 

 with his simplest and most luminous illustrations. 



