y abstract
rules. This view was to be corroborated by the theory of Darwin.

But here we have reached a point of view from which the criticism,
which in recent years has often been directed against Darwin--that
small variations are of no importance in the struggle for life--is of
no weight. From an ethical standpoint, and particularly from the
ethical standpoint of Darwin himself, it is a duty to foster
individual differences that can be valuable, even though they can
neither be of service for physical preservation nor be physically
inherited. The distinction between variation and mutation is here
without importance. It is quite natural that biologists should be
particularly interested in such variations as can be inherited and
produce new species. But in the human world there is not only a
physical, but also a mental and social heredity. When an ideal human
character has taken form, then there is shaped a type, which through
imitation and influence can become an important factor in subsequent
development, even if it cannot form a species in the biological sense
of the word. Spiritually strong men often succumb in the physical
struggle for life; but they can nevertheless be victorious through the
typical influence they exert, perhaps on very distant generations, if
the remembrance of them is kept alive, be it in legendary or in
historical form. Their very failure can show that a type has taken
form which is maintained at all risks, a standard of life which is
adhered to in spite of the strongest opposition. The question "to be
or not to be" can be put from very different levels of being: it has
too often been considered a consequence of Darwinism that this
question is only to be put from the lowest level. When a stage is
reached, where ideal (ethical, intellectual, aesthetic) interests are
concerned, the struggle for life is a struggle for the preservation of
this stage. The giving up of a higher standard of life is a sort of
death; for there is not only a physical, there is also a spiritual,
death.

VI

The Socratic character of Darwin's mind appears in his wariness in
drawing the last consequences of his doctrine, in contrast both with
the audacious theories of so many of his followers and with the
consequences which his antagonists were busy in drawing. Though he, as
we have seen, saw from the beginning that his hypothesis would
occasion "a whole of metaphysics," he was himself very reserved as to
the ultimate