ON HUMAN NATURE AND ITS CAPACITIES FOR VIRTUE. 95 



are sufficiently terrible, for our nerves are now more sensi- 

 tive, we have less toughness of fibre, possibly less courage 

 of heart than our fathers, all which weakness in the 

 physical base make the consequences of defeat and failure 

 in the contest the more dreadful in our apprehension. 



The struggle continues ; and while it lasts, and in 

 proportion to its intensity, it tends to keep the social 

 virtues, which undoubtedly exist, from further develop- 

 ment. It keeps them down to that moderate minimum 

 which society exacts, and indeed absolutely requires, as 

 a condition even of carrying on the competitive struggle 

 within some recognized lines of honour and fair play. 



4. Happily, however, man is naturally, as Darwin 

 maintains,* a social animal. He is such, both by long- 

 inherited instincts and the numerous necessities of his 

 life. And men have devised the means of pursuing their 

 own advantage and happiness, in very many cases not 

 only without interfering with that of others, but in some 

 cases all the more effectually in association, actual or 

 virtual, with others ; while advancing a great step, by a 

 happy and fortunate development in man's nature, the 

 greatest in the entire history of our species, they have 

 even come to include the happiness of others as a distinct 

 and important part of their own. 



Men have discovered that many of the materials of 

 well-being and happiness can be best secured by acting in 

 company with others ; that the result of united efforts 

 secures a much greater proportion for each when divided 

 than could have been realized by each one acting in 

 isolation ; that their interests are very often harmonious 

 and not antagonistic. But what is of far greater signifi- 

 cance and importance, they have found a still surer way 

 of conciliating in many cases the old antagonism between 



* Descent of Man, ch. iii., " On a Moral Sense." 



