ted is it that the struggle may last till the end of time. But, he
exclaims with a ringing note--

I see no limit to the extent to which intelligence and will,
guided by sound principles of investigation, and organized in
common effort, may modify the conditions of existence for a
period longer than that now covered by history. And much may
be done to change the nature of man himself. The intelligence
which has converted the brother of the wolf into the faithful
guardian of the flock ought to be able to do something towards
curbing the instincts of savagery in civilized men.

In the long struggle pain and sorrow are inevitable. The aim of man
is not to escape these, but rather to earn peace and self-respect. To
this he added a special point, in a letter of 1890:--

If you will accept the results of the experience of an old
man who has had a very chequered existence--and has nothing
to hope for except a few years of quiet downhill--there
is nothing of permanent value (putting aside a few human
affections), nothing that satisfies quiet reflection, except
the sense of having worked according to one's capacity and
light, to make things clear and get rid of cant and shams of
all sorts. That was the lesson I learned from Carlyle's books
when I was a boy, and it has stuck by me all my life.

The animal world, then, having the principle of its existence in a
state of war, society was created by the first men who substituted
the state of mutual peace for the state of mutual war. The object of
society was the limitation of the struggle for existence. That shape
of society most nearly approaches perfection in which the war of
individual against individual is most strictly limited. Happiness
and freedom of action are restricted to a sphere where they do not
interfere with the happiness and freedom of others; the common weal
becomes an essential part of individual welfare. In short, even if
under the most perfect conditions "Witless will always serve his
master," man aims to escape from 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. Moral purpose
is "an article of exclusively human manufacture--and very much to our
credit."

To