84 
SCIENCE TEACHING IN ENGLAND. 
principle involved is the same: the survival of those which are 
marked either by greater strength, stronger vitality, or 
slighter needs,—the survival of the fittest. 
And the law that is true for the herring is true for the man 
also, and with this addition, that the struggle for food, which 
once, no doubt, was the sole characteristic of an archaic 
human race, has been complicated by a struggle for possession 
and power. We have become very far removed from the period 
when the sole need of man was food; who can tell how early 
in the history of the race the struggle for the possession 
of women was added to it? And to that has been superadded 
the desire of many other possessions which are limited 
in quantity, and even the struggle for power as well. 
Why, this small island of ours, has it not, within that feeble 
span of time known as “historical period,” been the seat of 
struggles between Briton and Boman, Gael and Celt, Saxon, 
Dane, and Norman? No doubt most of these struggles have 
been struggles not for food ostensibly, but for power ; but 
what is power, but the right to eat, be clothed, and be served 
by the labour of others instead of by one’s own personal 
exertions ? And the struggle for money to-day is the precise 
equivalent to this mediaeval struggle for power, for to us 
moderns “money is power,” i.e ., is food and clothing, and 
service, yea, and pride as well. 
And now I would wish to draw your attention to one 
phase of this stiuggle for food, possessions and power, which 
is of vital importance to our own subject. The Hebrew Law¬ 
giver introduced us from the first to the moral element in 
man’s nature, the conflict in him of the powers of right and 
wrong, and the evolution of his constant mentor—conscience. 
Darwin has given us an insight into the physical side of life, 
and the incessant struggle amongst all organic creation, 
including man, for the mere right to live. Perhaps some 
third Moses, some greater than Herbert Spencer or Kant, 
may some day unfold to our vision the development of the 
intellectual faculties, and thus correlate our knowledge of the 
beginnings and history of mind and matter, soul and con¬ 
science. 
And surely the time is ripe for this, for if any one thing is 
more certain than any other, it is that, century after century, 
year after year, in the history of any advancing section of the 
human race, empire has been more and more shifting its seat 
from the muscle and sinew to the nerve and brain. Why, 
even our very wars, those crudest relics of primeval struggles 
for food, possession, and power, are fought to-day more with 
the brain than with the arm. The days of knightly chivalry, 
when victory lay with the strongest arm, the straiglitest lance, 
