462 Evolution and Modern Philosophy 
criticism, which in recent years has often been directed against 
Darwin—that small variations are of no importance in the struggle 
for life—is of no weight. From an ethical standpoint, and particularly 
from the ethical standpoint of Darwin himself, it is a duty to foster 
individual differences that can be valuable, even though they can 
neither be of service for physical preservation nor be physically 
inherited. The distinction between variation and mutation is here 
without importance. It is quite natural that biologists should be 
particularly interested in such variations as can be inherited and 
produce new species. But in the human world there is not only a 
physical, but also a mental and social heredity. When an ideal 
human character has taken form, then there is shaped a type, which 
through imitation and influence can become an important factor in 
subsequent development, even if it cannot form a species in the 
biological sense of the word. Spiritually strong men often succumb in 
the physical struggle for life ; but they can nevertheless be victorious 
through the typical influence they exert, perhapson very distant genera- 
tions, if the remembrance of them is kept alive, be it in legendary or 
in historical form. Their very failure can show that a type has taken 
form which is maintained at all risks, a standard of life which is 
adhered to in spite of the strongest opposition. The question “to 
be or not to be” can be put from very different levels of being : it 
has too often been considered a consequence of Darwinism that this 
question is only to be put from the lowest level. When a stage is 
reached, where ideal (ethical, intellectual, aesthetic) interests are 
concerned, the struggle for life is a struggle for the preservation of 
this stage. The giving up of a higher standard of life is a sort of 
death ; for there is not only a physical, there is also a spiritual, 
death. 
VI. 
The Socratic character of Darwin’s mind appears in his wariness 
in drawing the last consequences of his doctrine, in contrast both 
with the audacious theories of so many of his followers and with the 
consequences which his antagonists were busy in drawing. Though 
he, as we have seen, saw from the beginning that his hypothesis 
would occasion “a whole of metaphysics,” he was himself very 
reserved as to the ultimate questions, and his answers to such 
questions were extorted from him. 
As to the question of optimism and pessimism, Darwin held that 
though pain and suffering were very often the ways by which animals 
were led to pursue that course of action which is most beneficial to 
the species, yet pleasurable feelings were the most habitual guides, 
“We see this in the pleasure from exertion, even occasionally from 
