ning, but
that they are themselves the very sources of its power.

'The singular fact remains,' he says, 'that everything of the nature of
freedom, elegance, boldness, {21} dance, and masterly certainty, which
exists or has existed, whether it be in thought itself, or in
administration, or in speaking and persuading, in art just as in
conduct, has only developed by means of the tyranny of such arbitrary
law; and in all seriousness; it is not at all improbable that precisely
this is "nature" and "natural"--and not _laisser-aller_!'[6]

It only remains to drop the terms "arbitrary" and "tyranny"; since the
principle of development in life can scarcely be regarded as arbitrary,
or its effectual working as tyranny.

Huxley chose to draw a line between nature and morality, at the point
where a limit is set to the isolated organism's struggle against all
comers.

The practice of that which is ethically best--what we call goodness or
virtue--involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed
to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence.
In place of ruthless self-assertion it demands self-restraint.[7]

But Huxley appears momentarily to have overlooked the fact that the
struggle for existence itself puts a premium on self-restraint. For
there is no stage of evolution in which the adjustment and co-operation
of interests is not an aid to survival. One does not have to rise
higher in the scale of life than the plants fertilized by insects, to
observe the working of this principle. It is only the crudest and most
impotent self-assertion that is "ruthless." The reason for this {22}
is simply that the real enemy of every vital process is not another
kindred process, but the mechanical environment. Life is essentially
an assertion, not against life, but against death. Interests that
expend their energies in destroying or crippling one another, slip back
toward that primeval lifelessness from which they emerged. Restraint
for the sake of organization is therefore only a developed and
intelligent self-assertion.

If one insists still upon drawing a line between cosmical and moral
forces, let it be drawn at the point where there first arises that
unstable complex called life. Life does in a sense oppose itself to
the balance of nature. To hold itself together, it must play at parry
and thrust with the very forces which gave it birth. Once having
happened, it so acts as to pers