32 Causes of its Success 



human relations. Instead of widening it according to 

 his own hints, his followers narrowed it still more. 

 And while Herbert Spencer, starting on independent 

 but closely allied lines, attempted to widen the inquiry 

 into that great question, "Who are the fittest?" 

 especially in the appendix to the third edition of the 

 Data of Ethics, the numberless followers of Darwin 

 reduced the notion of struggle for existence to its 

 narrowest limits. They came to conceive the animal 

 world as a world of perpetual struggle among half- 

 starved individuals, thirsting for one another's blood. 

 They made modern literature resound with the war- 

 cry of ''Woe to the vanquished" as if it were the last 

 word of modern biology. They raised the "pitiless" 

 struggle for personal advantages to the height of a 

 biological principle which man must submit to as well, 

 under the menace of otherwise succumbing in a world 

 based upon mutual extermination. Leaving aside the 

 economists who know of natural science but a few 

 words borrowed from second-hand vulgarizers, we 

 must recognize that even the most authorized expo- 

 nents of Darwin's views did their best to maintain 

 those false ideas. ^ 



Even Huxley, who was one of the most powerful 

 protagonists of Darwin in the battle which raged 

 between science and traditional theology, and who 

 is considered to be one of the ablest exponents of 

 the theory of evolution, has been quoted in support 

 of the philosophy of force, by those who assume 

 that definite biological analogies can be applied 

 to human society. Thus in his essay on The 



' Kropotkin, Mutual Aid a Factor of Evolution, p. 3. 



