CHAP, xvi REITERATION OF DARWINISM 183 



selection modified by the presence of animal sympathy. 

 This seems a true account of the facts of nature, but 

 it is a miserably inadequate account of the facts of 

 human society ; and unfortunately Mr. Sutherland ad- 

 mits no morality among men beyond the rudimentary 

 morality which he finds in the brute world. Elimination 

 must do everything for us ; it cannot ! And whatever 

 elimination does for human advance it is precisely that 

 elimination which is least like the Darwinian that sur- 

 vives the advent of reason. If the child of vicious or 

 criminal or heartless parents is neglected and dies, 

 while the child of honest, pure, and affectionate 

 parents survives, there is no struggle. The better 

 care paid to the second child is not the cause why the 

 first succumbs. If the ill-cared-for child were the 

 only child in the world, it must still die of neglect. 

 " Elimination " here is not a case of selection after 

 struggle ; it is nature's own protest against vice and 

 exuberant selfishness. 



But let us pursue the subject further. Does Mr. 

 Sutherland habitually place himself outside of morality, 

 and view it with scientific coolness, as one quality 

 tending towards success ? Or does he write from the 

 inside, with a glow of admiration for " the true, the 

 just"? Very often he does the latter. It would be 

 altogether to misrepresent Mr. Sutherland if we did 

 not confess that he writes like a good man and a lover 

 of goodness. But in his final attitude he seeks to com- 

 bine both views. Goodness is authoritative for us ; 

 we are bound to be loyal to it ; we must speak and 

 think and feel as if goodness were something objective 

 and absolute, cosmical, divine ; and yet reason forces 

 us to be agnostics. Goodness is nothing but one of 



