110 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



plexities,and chances, and uncertainties, and contradictions 

 of things to proceed to secure the happiness of even the 

 smallest number, nay, even, as Butler argues, of one single 

 human individual, for whom we were most deeply concerned. 

 Still further : the love and service of humanity is an 

 impossible and Utopian ideal, so long as antagonism 

 exists between nation and nation, ever and anon breaking 

 out into deadly wars ; so long as civilized nations destroy 

 contiguous savage ones under natural selection ; so long 

 as, within the same nation and within all modern society, 

 there exists envy and enmity scarce concealed and ever 

 deepening between class and class, to say nothing of the 

 differences produced by party spirit or religious rancour ; 

 so long, finally, as the social struggle for existence lasts 

 which necessitates competition and rivalry between man 

 and man for place, possession, power, reputation. In par- 

 ticular, the love of humanity, the aim at the greatest happi- 

 ness, must be postponed for some considerable time to 

 come, as evidently incompatible with the state of growing 

 antagonism between the two main sections of modern 

 society an antagonism threatening civil war or social 

 revolution in all modern civilized nations, although in our 

 own it has only assumed the milder form of a struggle, 

 legal and seemingly peaceful, but really of a most 

 disastrous character, between employers and employed, 

 and in which not the combatants alone but the whole 

 community suffers. When the whole existing frame of 

 society is being shaken ; when there are signs that great 

 social changes are impending ; when, in short, we are in 

 the midst of an age of social revolution rather than of 

 social evolution ; the moral creed of Comte, of Bentham, 

 and of Mill is specially out of place and inapplicable to 

 men's guidance. When the time of struggle is over, if that 

 time ever .comes ; when men have recognized their general 



