82 THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 



nial existence in clover; while the ghosts of carnivores 

 are to go to some kennel where there is neither a pan of 

 water nor a bone with any meat on it. Besides, from 

 the point of view of morality, the last stage of things 

 would be worse than the first. For the carnivores, how- 

 ever brutal and sanguinary, have only done that which, 

 if there is any evidence of contrivance in the world, they 

 were expressly constructed to do. Moreover, carnivores 

 and herbivores alike have been subject to all the miseries 

 incidental to old age, disease, and over-multiplication, 

 and both might well put in a claim for "compensation" 

 on this score. 



On the evolutionist side, on the other hand, we are 

 told to take comfort from the reflection that the terrible 

 struggle for existence tends to final good, and that the 

 suffering of the ancestor is paid for by the increased per- 

 fection of the progeny. There would be something in 

 this argument if, in Chinese fashion, the present genera- 

 tion could pay its debts to its ancestors; otherwise it is 

 not clear what compensation the Eohippus gets for his 

 sorrows in the fact that, some millions of years after- 

 wards, one of his descendants wins the Derby. And, 

 again, it is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a 

 constant tendency to increased perfection. That process 

 undoubtedly involves a constant remodelling of the 

 organism in adaptation to new conditions ; but it depends 

 on the nature of these conditions whether the direction of 

 the modifications effected shall be upward or downward. 

 Retrogressive is as practical as progressive metamorpho- 

 sis. If what the physical philosophers tell us, that our 

 globe has been in a state of fusion, and, like the sun, is 

 gradually cooling down, is true; then the time must 

 come when evolution will mean adaptation to an universal 

 winter, and all forms of life will die out, except such low 

 and simple organisms as the Diatom of the arctic and 



