ered upon
its signification. And while some endeavour to extend its application to
everything, we find others trying to limit its range. The conception of
a "struggle for existence" has in the present day been taken up into
the social sciences from natural science, and adopted. But originally it
descended from social science to natural. Darwin's law is, as he himself
said, only Malthus' law generalised and extended to the animal world: a
growing disproportion between the supply of food and the number of
the living is the fatal order whence arises the necessity of universal
struggle, a struggle which, to the great advantage of the species,
allows only the best equipped individuals to survive. Nature is regarded
by Huxley as an immense arena where all living beings are gladiators.
("Evolution and Ethics", page 200; "Collected Essays", Vol. IX, London,
1894.)

Such a generalisation was well adapted to feed the stream of pessimistic
thought; and it furnished to the apologists of war, in particular, new
arguments, weighted with all the authority which in these days attaches
to scientific deliverances. If people no longer say, as Bonald did, and
Moltke after him, that war is a providential fact, they yet lay stress
on the point that it is a natural fact. To the peace party Dragomirov's
objection is urged that its attempts are contrary to the fundamental
laws of nature, and that no sea wall can hold against breakers that come
with such gathered force.

But in yet another quarter Darwinism was represented as opposed to
philanthropic intervention. The defenders of the orthodox political
economy found in it support for their tenets. Since in the organic world
universal struggle is the condition of progress, it seemed obvious that
free competition must be allowed to reign unchecked in the economic
world. Attempts to curb it were in the highest degree imprudent. The
spirit of Liberalism here seemed in conformity with the trend of nature:
in this respect, at least, contemporary naturalism, offspring of the
discoveries of the nineteenth century, brought reinforcements to the
individualist doctrine, begotten of the speculations of the eighteenth:
but only, it appeared, to turn mankind away for ever from humanitarian
dreams. Would those whom such conclusions repelled be content to oppose
to nature's imperatives only the protests of the heart? There were some
who declared, like Brunetiere, that the laws in question, valid though
they