94 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



character of the whole contest, and this not less in the 

 case of man than of any other species. Thus he tells 

 us, in bold and brusque language, that only " the idealist 

 scholar who closes his eyes to the real truth, or the priest 

 who tries to keep his spiritual flock in ecclesiastical 

 leading-strings, can any longer tell the fable of the ' moral 

 ordering of the world.' It exists neither in nature nor 

 in human life, neither in natural history nor the history 

 of civilization. The terrible and ceaseless ' struggle for 

 existence ' gives the real impulse to the blind course of 

 the world. A moral ordering and a purposed plan of the 

 world can only be visible if the prevalence of an immoral 

 rule of the strongest and undesigned organization is 

 entirely ignored." * The picture here drawn is darkly 

 coloured, and, in fact, is not true ; for, as we have main- 

 tained elsewhere, there is a purpose and also a morality 

 discernible in the facts of life and the structure of society; 

 there is, moreover, a progress visible and a tendency to a 

 higher morality, though not quite through the agency of 

 natural selection ; nevertheless there remains an important 

 truth in the view of Haeckel which our rt benevolence " 

 moralists of the past century did not perceive or found it 

 convenient to overlook; and which our humanitarians and 

 utilitarians of to-day, the followers of Bentham, Mill, 

 and Comte, would do well to remember. There is a 

 struggle for existence still going on, which tends to bring 

 out the self-asserting and selfish side of our nature into 

 undue prominence ; the fierceness and fellness of the 

 struggle is indeed considerably mitigated, as compared 

 with that of former ages, and some quarter is usually 

 shown to the conquered ; nevertheless, the struggle still 

 goes on, and, though with mitigated fury, its consequences 



* The Evolution of Man, vol. i. p. 112 ; also History of Creation, vol. i. 

 p. 19, where the like sentiments are expressed. 



