202 THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 



which engage the human mind must be interrupted 

 two or three times a day to do it homage. 



Whatever Man came ultimately to wish and to 

 achieve for himself, it was essential at first that such 

 arrangements should be made for him. The ma- 

 chinery for his development had not only to be put 

 into Nature, but he had to be placed in the machine 

 and held there, and brought back there as often as he 

 tried to evade it. To say that man evolved himself, 

 nevertheless, is as absurd as to say that a newspaper 

 prints itself. To say even that the machinery evolved 

 him is us preposterous as to say of a poem that the 

 printing-press made it. The ultimate problem is, Who 

 made the machine ? and Who thought the poem that 

 was to be printed ? 



If you say that you do not unreservedly approve of 

 the machine, that it lacerates as well as binds, the 

 difficulty is more real. But it is a principle in the 

 study of history to suspend judgment both of the 

 meaning and of the value of a policy until the chain 

 of sequences it sets in motion should be worked out 

 to its last, fulfilment. When the full tale of the 

 Struggle for Life is told, when the record of its vic- 

 tories is closed, when the balance of its gains and 

 losses has been struck, and especially when it is 

 proved that there actually have been losses, it will be 

 time to pass judgment on its moral value. Of course 

 this principle cuts both ways ; it warns off a favora. <le 

 as well as an unfavorable verdict on the beneficence of 

 the system of things. But Evolution is a study in 

 history, and its results are largely known. And it 

 Would be affectation to deny that on the whole these 

 results are good, and appear the worthier the more we 



