we cannot believe that we have
attained to perfection and truth."[7] From this point of view there can
be no doubt as to which of these conceptions of Evolution is the more
rational and satisfactory; that which would explain it by a simple
tendency in living matter to persist and spread, and would see in all
organic variety only the selected means to that somewhat colourless end;
or that conception which would explain it by a tendency in living matter
to come into ever fuller correspondence with its environment, seeing in
such spontaneous correspondence the very essence of life, and not merely
a condition of life.

We need only add a few criticisms on this second conception.

1. It is true that every creature struggles more intensely and
vigorously for the lower kind of life, or for "mere life," as we might
say, than for any of those things which alone would seem to make life
worth the having. But this only means that to live at all is the most
fundamental condition of living well and fully and enjoyably. The higher
life cannot stand without the lower, which it includes, but the lower is
not therefore the better, nor is it the end for whose sake the higher is
desirable; but conversely. Not until men have got bread enough to eat
will they have leisure or energy to spare for the animal grades of
vitality. When the means of bodily subsistence grow scarce, then the
faculties that were previously set free to seek the bread of a higher
and fuller life are diverted to the struggle for bare animal existence,
and progress is thrown back; but when there is abundance for all,
secured by the labour of a few from whom the remainder can buy, then
fuller life becomes once more possible for that remainder. The struggle
for bodily food gives an advantage to, and "selects" naturally, those
mental and other powers which facilitate its attainment; but just as man
does not only eat and labour in order to live, but also (however it may
shock conventional ethics) lives in order to eat and labour; so the new
energies called forth by competition do not merely secure that grade of
life in whose interests they are evoked and perfected, but extend the
sphere of vitality, in so much as their own play adds a new element to
life and gives it a new form.

The part played by struggle and competition in this process of Evolution
is naturally exaggerated by those who deny any latent tendency other
than that of mere persistence in being; who repudiate