CHAP, xiv REACTION FROM DARWINISM: HUXLEY 149 



istence which is believed to have dominated the plant 

 and animal kingdoms. And for him the union of 

 evolution with ethics means not analogy but identity ; 

 it means that man, the individual organism, is held to 

 become moral by succeeding in the struggle for exist- 

 ence a sufficiently startling paradox. Huxley makes 

 no explicit reference to Spencer's formula, tracing a 

 single harmonious process, right back to the primeval 

 nebula and right on to moralised man. He is willing 

 to generalise evolution as much as you please, but it 

 seems to him that there is a seriously novel element 

 introduced at one point in the process, cutting it as it 

 were in two. " When the cosmopoietic energy works 

 through sentient beings there arises among its other 

 manifestations that which we call pain or suffering." 

 And suffering is most intense in man, especially as he 

 rises in the scale of civilisation, " under those condi- 

 tions which are essential to the full development of 

 his noblest powers." l Animal struggle runs on into 

 human struggle, but such struggle is immoral. We 

 must not wantonly add to the pain suffered by our 

 fellows ; we must " let the ape and tiger die." The 

 Spencerian formula so we may read between the 

 lines makes no room for those elements which, to 

 Huxley's mind, are of real moral significance. As for 

 Comte's attempt to view social life as the evolution 

 of one orderly and peaceful organism, or as to Mr. 

 Leslie Stephen's gloss upon that attempt, or as to Pro- 

 fessor Alexander's bloodless and well-nigh painless 

 Darwinism in the shape of competing ethical types, 

 Huxley says nothing. He cannot separate evolution 

 from the cruel Darwinian struggle in its plain and 



1 p. 10. 



