CHAP. XX SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 293 



But, if this be the meaning of the appeal to natural 

 selection and to struggle, it almost forces us to ask 

 whether our definition has gone deep enough. Are 

 the competitors in reality so many distinct ultimate 

 factors in progress ? Or are they all held in the grasp 

 of one great evolving system ? not, however, to be 

 defined as matter and motion growing more complex ! 

 Is the relation between the different forces simply or 

 mainly one of rivalry ; is it not predominantly one of 

 co-operation? Is history a Kilkenny cat struggle 

 between nations, or in history is struggle itself subor- 

 dinated to an evolution of mankind ? Ought an en- 

 lightened nation to regard its neighbours mainly as 

 rivals, or mainly as brothers in the common tasks of 

 civilisation ? And so with ethical conceptions ; is the 

 history of moral thought mainly a struggle of system 

 against system, of ideal against ideal, or is it an evolu- 

 tion of one ideal ? And is each moralist pledged by 

 fidelity to his own views to eat up and destroy his 

 rivals, or may he also be the conscious servant of a 

 wider truth? Even in nature, one more and more 

 questions the adequacy of the view which regards the 

 various organisms simply as each other's rivals, the 

 co-operating forces simply as happening to coincide. 

 And, when we pass on to the fuller " symbiosis " of 

 reason and morality, the Darwinian formulae snap in 



against each other. That does not seem to hit the true line of differ- 

 ence, or to mark the real ground of the failure of biological sociology 

 in the past, which Mr. Mallock once again deplores. " Struggling 

 parts " are not unknown in biological speculation. Psychical progress, 

 by great men or otherwise, is direct and therefore rapid. 



Mr. Mallock overdoes his apotheosis of competition. We will still 

 believe that even the " great man " may rise to higher things than an 

 exceptional hugeness of desire. 



