242 HUXLEY 



living things. It is notable that " increase and mul- 

 tiply " is a commandment traditionally much older 

 than the ten ; and that it is, perhaps, the only one 

 which has been spontaneously and ex animo obeyed by 

 the great majority of the human race. But, in civ- 

 ilised society, the inevitable result of such obedience 

 is the reestablishment, in all its intensity, of that 

 struggle for existence — the war of each against all — 

 the mitigation or abolition of which was the chief 

 end of social organisation. 1 



" There is no discharge in that war," and the strug- 

 gle has rather increased in force than lessened since 

 Huxley wrote these words. Competition becomes 

 sharper ; and the cry for protection is a return to the 

 narrow ethics of the tribe. The community that 

 trusts to old repute and disdains new methods, and 

 that artificially reduces each member of its industrial 

 classes to a common level, will be worsted in a battle 

 where the wounded receive no quarter, and where 

 starvation is the penalty of surrender. There sur- 

 vives in many parts of the globe, notably in thickly- 

 peopled China, the practice of partly meeting the dif- 

 ficulty of excess of population over means of sub- 

 sistence by infanticide ; while in former days, all the 

 world over, the ravages wrought by famine, war, and 

 pestilence were unchecked. But the progress of 

 private and public morality has steadily tended to re- 

 move the effects of those scourges, and the finer 



1 Coll. Essays, ix. p. 205. 



