xvm ORGANISATION AND EVOLUTION 433 



with things superfluous. He is wont to walk into the- 

 well while gazing at the stars ; and he may be thankful 

 with Plato himself if he is able to get under the shelter 

 of a wall, and philosophise there unmolested by the storms 

 that beat outside. Originality is the greatest disadvantage 

 to its possessor in the intellectual market. The same 

 point is more obviously true on the moral side. Every 

 one of the Christian virtues is obviously a disadvantage 

 to its possessor in the struggle for existence, more par- 

 ticularly in a Christian community. The greatest offence 

 a man can commit against society is to be in any respect 

 better than society. For such the criminal law has always 

 reserved its worst tortures. But these germs of higher 

 qualities, so dangerous to their possessors, are destined in 

 their fuller development to carry human life to a higher 

 level. What was a short time ago a struggling ideal, is 

 now placidly accepted as normal. The world wonders 

 how it could ever have got on without it. The martyr 

 of the past generation is duly canonised, while the gridiron 

 is being cheerfully heated for the prophet of a still higher 

 creed. 



Natural selection no doubt plays a beneficent part in 

 human life in curing the worst aberrations of the moral 

 or social standard. And this is not all. The higher 

 principle, if it is given time to develop far enough and 

 deepen its hold, is also stronger than any lower principle, 

 and fairly beats it in the struggle for existence. Mr. 

 Sutherland has shown at great length how first the parental 

 and then the social principle are positively fortified and 

 confirmed by the struggle for existence. The most careful 

 parents will bring the largest proportion of their family to 

 maturity, while the children of the careless and the callous 

 are allowed to die. Similarly at a higher remove the best 

 ordered State is at an advantage over its competitors. 

 But here at once we trench upon the limits of this method 

 of progress. The good order necessary to a successful war 

 may, as we well know, be secured at the cost of individual 

 liberty, and of much besides. Hence an iron despotism 

 may overthrow a state containing within it the elements 

 of a higher order, which, if it came to maturity, would be 



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