88 THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 



his place in the animal kingdom, founded on the free 

 development of the principle of non-moral evolution, and 

 to establish a kingdom of Man, governed upon the 

 principle of moral evolution. For society not only has 

 a moral end, but in its perfection, social life, is embodied 

 morality. 



But the effort of ethical man to work towards a moral 

 end by no means abolished, perhaps has hardly modified, 

 the deep-seated organic impulses which impel the natu- 

 ral man to follow his non-moral course. One of the most 

 essential conditions, if not the chief cause, of the strug- 

 gle for existence, is the tendency to multiply without 

 limit, which man shares with all living things. It is 

 notable that "increase and multiply" is a commandment 

 traditionally much older than the ten; and that it is, 

 perhaps, the only one which has been spontaneously and 

 ex animo 9 obeyed by the great majority of the human 

 race. But, in civilized society, the inevitable result of 

 such obedience is the re-establishment, in all its inten- 

 sity, of that struggle for existence the war of each 

 against all the mitigation or abolition of which was the 

 chief end of social organization. 



It is conceivable that, at some period in the history of 

 the fabled Atlantis, 10 the production of food should have 

 been exactly sufficient to meet the wants of the popula- 

 tion, that the makers of the commodities of the artificer 

 should have amounted to just the number supportable by 

 the surplus food of the agriculturists. And, as there 

 is no harm in adding another monstrous supposition to 

 the foregoing, let it be imagined that every man, woman, 

 and child was perfectly virtuous, and aimed at the good 



9 "From the heart," "sincerely." 



10 Atlantis was a fabled island in the western ocean mentioned 

 by classical writers. Bacon's New Atlantis described an ideal 

 commonwealth on an island in the mid-Atlantic. 



