4o8 The Morality of Nature 



erations, in all ancestors, is now presumably sufficient for the 

 creature in the present. With this equipment the success or 

 failure of the creature is given in his charge, and all the 

 life extant upon the earth is that which has maintained itself 

 upon these terms, in the face of besetting difficulties such 

 as hostile environment, and competing rivals. 



And we see that while some creatures succeed and pros- 

 per, others of the same race, fail and die, because they happen 

 into environment which is too difficult for them. This, 

 which appears to be an injustice if argued in relation to the 

 lesser life of the individual, is made evidently just and con- 

 sistent by the fact, established by study of the greater life 

 in evolution, that the two groups (that which lived and that 

 which died) were but two parts of the same creature. One 

 part received much ; but the other, preserved to receive more, 

 was comparatively better qualified, in being more favorably 

 established, to continue a racial life which was equally 

 represented in either. 



The development of the argument of universal justice 

 must be referred however to the province of philosophy. It 

 has sufficed now, from analytic study, to point out that evo- 

 lution, which rewards in the descendant, conduct accom- 

 plished by the ancestor, indicates clearly that the justice 

 evident in the greater life, is and must be, imperfect or 

 incomplete toward the lesser or individual life, because of 

 its relations subordinated to the larger units, and this is as 

 we inferred from a search for justice in individual conduct. 



But if we contemplate a conduct unit of living matter 

 extended so as to include in one judgment the several indi- 

 viduals of the same lineage, and the many branches of the 



