Spiritual Evolution of Society 1 5 3 



of nothing but " nature, red in tooth and claw," as if 

 the world were a vast charnel-house. Doubtless some 

 species do prey more or less on others, but no further 

 than is necessary to maintain the balance of nature. 

 We have proved that the " survival of the fittest " is 

 only a catchword, and that any evolution as a result of 

 such law has never been demonstrated and never will, 

 as all species refuse to perpetuate their " sports," and 

 by the removal of all variations through the influence 

 of marriage, in a few generations return to the 

 average. 



Darwin called Malthus to his aid and accepted his 

 law of population ; he believed with him that only by 

 means of war, pestilence, famine, vice, and misery could 

 the human race be kept within due bounds, that is, 

 within the limits required by the means of subsistence. 

 It is surely one of the strangest of facts in regard to 

 the domination of the human mind by a hypothesis of 

 this kind, that the educated men of his generation 

 accepted all Darwin's statements as immutably true at 

 the very time they were demonstrating their disbelief 

 by acting in such a way as to prove their adherence to 

 the very opposite. They introduced measures into 

 Parliament to lessen or remove the miseries of men ; 

 they built hospitals and asylums to cure disease and 

 keep the wretched and feeble alive ; they prevented 

 famine by the abolition of the Corn Laws ; they regu- 

 lated sanitation and removed slums and filth of all 

 kinds ; they took preventive measures against infective 

 diseases, so that now preventive medicine is one of the 

 most potent forces in increasing the happiness of man- 

 kind ; they have built the Great Palace of Peace at the 

 Hague, and are pushing forward all means to secure 

 arbitration and prevent war. How long will it be before 

 men come to see that in " turning their swords into 

 ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks," 



