THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 89 



of all as the highest personal good. In that happy land, 

 the natural man would have been finally put down by 

 the ethical man. There would have been no competition, 

 but the industry of each would have been serviceable to 

 all; nobody being vain and nobody avaricious, there 

 would have been no rivalries; the struggle for existence 

 would have been abolished, and the millennium would 

 have finally set in. But it is obvious that this state of 

 things could have been permanent only with a station- 

 ary population. Add ten fresh mouths; and as, by the 

 supposition, there was only exactly enough before, some- 

 body must go on short rations. The Atlantis society 

 might have been a heaven upon earth, the whole nation 

 might have consisted of just men, needing no repen- 

 tance, and yet somebody must starve. Reckless Istar, 

 non-moral Nature, would have riven the ethical fabric. I 

 was once talking with a very eminent physician 11 about 

 the vis medicatrix natures. 12 "Stuff!" said he; "nine 

 times out of ten nature does not want to cure the man: 

 she wants to put him in his coffin." And Istar-Nature 

 appears to have equally little sympathy with the ends 

 of society. "Stuff! she wants nothing but a fair field and 

 free play for her darling the strongest." 



Our Atlantis may be an impossible figment, but the 

 antagonistic tendencies which the fable adumbrates have 

 existed in every society which was ever established, and, 

 to all appearance, must strive for the victory in all that 

 will be. Historians point to the greed and ambition of 

 rulers, to the reckless turbulence of the ruled, to the 

 debasing effects of wealth and luxury, and to the dev- 

 astating wars which have formed a great part of the 

 occupation of mankind, as the causes of the decay of 

 states and the foundering of old civilizations, and thereby 



11 The late Sir W. Gull. [T. H. H.] 



12 "Healing power of nature." 



