312 THE FUTURE OF KELIGION AND MORALS. 



evolution of all things, the evil as well as the good. 

 For, given the nature of all individual living beings, as 

 essentially and necessarily self-conserving; given the 

 necessarily geometrical rate of reproduction, and the 

 blind strength of the reproductive instincts; given the 

 necessarily limited supply of food; given the large 

 chapter of contingencies that must for ever beset every 

 species of animals, and still more every individual ; 

 given all these, and Darwin shows us clearly that the 

 struggle for existence necessarily begins ; the struggle 

 for life, which in so many cases means death to other 

 beings, begins ; and good and evil are necessarily intro- 

 diiced to the world together, to begin an eternal strife. 

 Even moral evil, which appears only in man, is necessary 

 as well as moral good: neither can appear till some 

 society exists, after which both are necessary and pre- 

 dictable from the nature of the social units and their 

 incidental circumstances. In the whole Darwinian 

 picture of the universe and its process of evolution, 

 necessity and natural selection rule as by native right, 

 while " next to them high arbiter Chance governs all." 



Yet more. Though the evolution doctrine, in the 

 hands of Herbert Spencer, is not materialism, and 

 declines to be identified with materialism which is 

 characterized as a futile hypothesis nevertheless evolu- 

 tion has furnished new arguments and suggestions of 

 which the materialist has eagerly availed himself in 

 order to dispense with the notion of mind and purpose 

 in the explanation of the origin and present existence 

 of the universe. The revised materialism of Buchner 

 and Moleschott in Germany, a quarter of a century ago, 

 had mainly based itself on physiological conclusions and 

 on the new law of the conservation of energy, in attempt- 

 ing to show that mind in man, like every other force, 



