might be for the animal kingdom, were not applicable to the human.
And so a return was made to the classic dualism. This indeed seems to be
the line that Huxley took, when, for instance, he opposed to the cosmic
process an ethical process which was its reverse.
But the number of thinkers whom this antithesis does not satisfy grows
daily. Although the pessimism which claims authorisation from Darwin's
doctrines is repugnant to them, they still are unable to accept the
dualism which leaves a gulf between man and nature. And their endeavour
is to link the two by showing that while Darwin's laws obtain in both
kingdoms, the conditions of their application are not the same: their
forms, and, consequently, their results, vary with the varying mediums
in which the struggle of living beings takes place, with the means
these beings have at disposal, with the ends even which they propose to
themselves.
Here we have the explanation of the fact that among determined opponents
of war partisans of the "struggle for existence" can be found: there are
disciples of Darwin in the peace party. Novicow, for example, admits
the "combat universel" of which Le Dantec ("Les Luttes entre Societies
humaines et leurs phases successives", Paris, 1893,) speaks; but he
remarks that at different stages of evolution, at different stages of
life the same weapons are not necessarily employed. Struggles of brute
force, armed hand to hand conflicts, may have been a necessity in the
early phases of human societies. Nowadays, although competition may
remain inevitable and indispensable, it can assume milder forms.
Economic rivalries, struggles between intellectual influences, suffice
to stimulate progress: the processes which these admit are, in the
actual state of civilisation, the only ones which attain their end
without waste, the only ones logical. From one end to the other of the
ladder of life, struggle is the order of the day; but more and more
as the higher rungs are reached, it takes on characters which are
proportionately more "humane."
Reflections of this kind permit the introduction into the economic order
of limitations to the doctrine of "laisser faire, laisser passer." This
appeals, it is said, to the example of nature where creatures, left to
themselves, struggle without truce and without mercy; but the fact
is forgotten that upon industrial battlefields the conditions are
different. The competitors here are not left simply to their nat
|