434 MIND IN EVOLUTION CHAP. 



not only better but also stronger than its conqueror. And 

 this is but one instance of a rule pervading all relations of 

 life. If the man of genius is endowed with unusually 

 strong will, or is placed in exceptionally favourable cir- 

 cumstances, he not merely escapes disaster, but imposes 

 his genius on the world, and is recognised as one of its 

 great men. The inventor is not always ruined, and if 

 not ruined, he makes a fortune. The loving tempera- 

 ment is not always crushed, and if not crushed, it is the 

 foundation of the most enduring happiness. But it re- 

 mains that in the ordinary course of the world, the virtues 

 and excellences belonging to the highest type are a disad- 

 vantage to the individual in the naked struggle for exist- 

 ence. They need the shelter of a social order in which 

 the reign of force is suspended or mitigated, and in that 

 shelter they reach a maturity in which they are found to 

 be after all the strongest as well as the most beautiful 

 growth. 



9. The suspension of the struggle for existence makes 

 possible a many-sided development. In some directions 

 this development is all good, in others it is a mixed good, 

 in yet others it may lead to evils which the unmitigated 

 struggle would never allow to come into existence. But 

 upon the whole, this many-sidedness means that human 

 life becomes fuller, and that the infinitely varied capacities 

 of human beings find more and more room for satisfaction. 

 And this again is as much as to say that life reaches a higher 

 stage of organisation. For the highest organism is that 

 which, while maintaining its unity, allows the fullest de- 

 velopment of individuality in its parts. The controlling 

 factor needed to replace the rude efficacy of the struggle, 

 is the intelligent apprehension of the organisation possible 

 for human life, and the subjection of current standards of 

 value to that principle. At this point the conditions of 

 existence cease to act as a check on intelligence from out- 

 side. They are absorbed into its system as part of the 

 knowledge which it uses for its own ends. The philo- 

 sophic science of the highest stage brings us back to the 

 conditions of existence as the source of laws for conduct 

 from which we started in the sphere of instinct, but the 



