246 THE GOSPEL, AND THE SOCIAL CREED OF SCIENCE. 



modern civilized warfare ; there is even aid to the 

 wounded in both cases from an increase in our sympathy 

 and humanity. 



There is, moreover, a greater recognition of the gulf 

 of disastrous chance into which the worthy and the 

 intellectually capable may be precipitated as well as the 

 worthless and unfit; and this reflection makes men 

 inclined to deal more considerately with the cases of 

 failure that a change of circumstances or a turn in 

 fortune's wheel might have made their own. This sphere 

 of chance may not really be greater in modern life, but it 

 is more seen and more felt ; and our system of indi- 

 vidualism, of which the socialists complain, necessarily 

 brings a certain amount of it with it. But with the evil 

 has come the mitigation. 



Further, there is the felt community of interests 

 amongst the members of different classes, and callings, of 

 associations and companies with common aims and 

 objects, which abates competition to the extent of the 

 common interest inside such groups and societies, leaving 

 it to exist only between the various groups themselves, 

 or in lessened degree between the individuals composing 

 them. All this, however, does not prevent the applica- 

 tion of the law of natural selection, nor do away with the 

 need of competition in its other and salutary forms. The 

 considerations above pointed out mitigate the harsher 

 features of competition, but they do not show that we 

 could dispense with competition the one sure and 

 constant means employed by Nature to improve society, 

 and to achieve intellectual, moral, and physical excellence 

 in the race. By this sorting and eliminating process 

 constantly at work, if its natural course is not deliberately 

 frustrated by men themselves, in the permission and 

 encouragement of the inferior or worst specimens the 



