SANCTIONS FOR CONFLICT 371 



fulfilled, we find that this goal is but a step further in the road 

 of eternal expansion. Having reached it, we are compelled, 

 whether we wish it or not, to go further ; otherwise others may- 

 catch us up, pass us, and arrive ahead of us at the next goal ; 

 and once we lag behind, amid the stress of competition and the 

 numbers of our rivals, it is wellnigh impossible to regain the lost 

 ground. Every goal is but a mirage, or, rather, it is but a fresh 

 starting-point. The legend of the wandering Jew contains a 

 profound philosophy ; we, too, hke wandering Jews, are con- 

 demned by the very conditions of our existence to go on ever 

 further, without rest, but not always without haste, as Goethe 

 enjoins us. The very idea of expansion implies the correlated 

 idea of insatiability. 



And this seems to us to be the reason why man, having attained 

 the age of reason, does not put an end to the struggle for exist- 

 ence in obedience to his own instinct of self-preservation. Mr. 

 Kidd, in the work afore mentioned, has brilliantly discussed the 

 conditions of social evolution in one of the most valuable and 

 important sociological books ever published. According to him, 

 " the evidence would appear to point indubitably to the con- 

 clusion that these conditions — i.e., the struggle for life — can have 

 had no sanction from reason for the mass of the individuals 

 subject to them. It may be held that they are conditions 

 essential to progress, and that the future interests of the society 

 to which we belong, and even of the race, would inevitably suffer 

 if they were suspended. But this is not an argument to weigh 

 with the individual concerned with his own interests in the 

 present, and not with the possible interests in the future of 

 society or the race. It seems impossible to conceive how the 

 conditions of progress could have had any rational sanction for 

 the host of exterminated peoples of whom a vision rises before 

 us when we compare the average European brain of to-day with 

 that of the lowest savagesj and consider the steps by which alone 

 the advance can have been made. . . . The same conclusion is 



24—2 



