ng to his ability, to each according to his need. But no:
we have no principles left, not even commercial ones; for what sane
commercialist would decree that France must not pay for her failure to
defend her own soil; that Germany must pay for her success in carrying
the war into the enemy's country; and that as Germany has not the money
to pay, and under our commercial system can make it only by becoming
once more a commercial competitor of England and France, which neither
of them will allow, she must borrow the money from England, or America,
or even from France: an arrangement by which the victorious creditors
will pay one another, and wait to get their money back until Germany is
either strong enough to refuse to pay or ruined beyond the possibility
of paying? Meanwhile Russia, reduced to a scrap of fish and a pint of
cabbage soup a day, has fallen into the hands of rulers who perceive
that Materialist Communism is at all events more effective than
Materialist Nihilism, and are attempting to move in an intelligent and
ordered manner, practising a very strenuous Intentional Selection of
workers as fitter to survive than idlers; whilst the Western Powers are
drifting and colliding and running on the rocks, in the hope that if
they continue to do their worst they will get Naturally Selected for
survival without the trouble of thinking about it.

THE HOMEOPATHIC REACTION AGAINST DARWINISM

When, like the Russians, our Nihilists have it urgently borne in on
them, by the brute force of rising wages that never overtake rising
prices, that they are being Naturally Selected for destruction, they
will perhaps remember that 'Dont Care came to a bad end,' and begin to
look round for a religion. And the whole purpose of this book is to
shew them where to look. For, throughout all the godless welter of the
infidel half-century, Darwinism has been acting not only directly but
homeopathically, its poison rallying our vital forces not only to resist
it and cast it out, but to achieve a new Reformation and put a credible
and healthy religion in its place. Samuel Butler was the pioneer of the
reaction as far as the casting out was concerned; but the issue was
confused by the physiologists, who were divided on the question into
Mechanists and Vitalists. The Mechanists said that life is nothing but
physical and chemical action; that they have demonstrated this in many
cases of so-called vital phenomena; and that there is no reason to