CHAP, xvi REITERATION OF DARWINISM 177 



at work, we seem to have before us a programme of 

 the boldest evolutionary optimism. All must be for 

 the best in this best of all possible universes. Prog- 

 ress, it would seem, cannot fail or be checked. That, 

 we think, ought to have been Mr. Sutherland's doc- 

 trine, given his premises. Yet it turns out that he 

 believes the clock went back precisely one thousand 

 years when the barbarians overran the Roman em- 

 pire. It took the barbarians precisely that time 

 Christianity and all to reach the social and moral 

 level of ancient Rome (! !) and then progress re- 

 commenced. Now, what does this singular view 

 mean ? Perhaps for one thing it means that Mr. 

 Sutherland like Mr. Spencer, yet not altogether 

 like him; unlike Bagehot has no sense of the 

 moral worth of war, under whatever circumstances 

 waged. It means that the masculine ideal, in spite 

 of some isolated references to it, is left out of the 

 reckoning, while the feminine ideal of sympathy is 

 given a place of absolute predominance and authority. 

 In a world wholly governed by natural selection, soft- 

 ness surely ought to be ranked as a deadly sin. The 

 Roman empire had grown too soft to fight. It was 

 not therefore advanced, but retrograde, and unfit to 

 survive. The barbarians may have been one thou- 

 sand years behind, tried by certain tests ; but, in the 

 light of the most practical of all tests, they were not 

 behind, but before. Of course Mr. Sutherland's 

 ultimate definition of "morality," as we shall find, 

 makes it only one constituent of human well-being. 

 Surely a very unfortunate abuse of terminology in a 

 moral treatise ! 



Another qualification of Mr. Sutherland's views 



