144 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART ill 



with dogmatic confidence. He never fully inquires 

 what limits attend their use. Of course, it is possi- 

 ble to represent progress in thought as due to a com- 

 petition between various types or ideals. Let us grant 

 this in the fullest way. Such language is lawful ; it 

 may be suggestive and valuable. But metaphors are 

 treacherous things ; they leave out at least half the 

 truth. 



Natural selection takes place, or is alleged to take 

 place, through the struggle for existence, because 

 there is not room for all to live and be nourished 

 side by side. Every living organism cannot live out 

 its full time and transmit its peculiarities to offspring. 

 But what forbids moral ideals to exist side by side ? 

 Truth to tell, they have done so in the past, and do 

 so yet in different lands, or even in one land in 

 different minds, or even in one mind. The struggle 

 of ideals is much less keen than the biological strug- 

 gle for existence, at least at starting, and in its lower 

 stages ; afterwards its working may become swift 

 and telling. Ideals compete against each other in 

 human minds. They commend themselves not by 

 any physical superiority, but by their attractiveness 

 or by their truth. 



Secondly, there is a difference mentioned by Mr. 

 Alexander himself. Defeat here, in the struggle of 

 ideals, does not imply the extinction of the persons 

 holding inferior moral conceptions. The ideals per- 

 ish ; the persons who held them are usually con- 

 verted to a higher way of thinking. Surely here we 

 have an open admission that the struggle between 

 ideals is not a struggle of the Darwinian order. 

 Progress according to Darwin is dependent on the 



