cy that things would have been pleasanter. If the
struggle, which we all know to exist, had no effect in preventing the
"survival of the fittest," things--so, at least, some of us may
think--would have been worse. But such fancies have nothing to do with
scientific inquiries. We have to take things as they are and make the
best of them.

The common feeling, no doubt, is different. The incessant struggle
between different races suggests a painful view of the universe, as
Hobbes' natural state of war suggested painful theories as to human
nature. War is evidently immoral, we think; and a doctrine which makes
the whole process of evolution a process of war must be radically
immoral too. The struggle, it is said, demands "ruthless
self-assertion" and the hunting down of all competitors; and such
phrases certainly have an unpleasant sound. But in the first place, the
use of the epithets implies an anthropomorphism to which we have no
right so long as we are dealing with the inferior species. We are then
in a region to which such ideas have no direct application, and where
the moral sentiments exist only in germ, if they can properly be said
to exist at all. Is it fair to call a wolf ruthless because he eats a
sheep and fails to consider the transaction from the sheep's point of
view? We must surely admit that if the wolf is without mercy he is also
without malice. We call an animal ferocious because a man who acted in
the same way would be ferocious. But the man is really ferocious
because he is really aware of the pain which he inflicts. The wolf, I
suppose, has no more recognition of the sheep's feelings than a man has
of feelings in the oyster or the potato. For him, they are simply
non-existent; and it is just as inappropriate to think of the wolf as
cruel, as it would be to call the sheep cruel for eating grass. Are we
to say that "nature" is cruel because the arrangement increases the sum
of undeserved suffering? That is a problem which I do not feel able to
examine; but it is, at least, obvious that it cannot be answered
off-hand in the affirmative. To the individual sheep it matters nothing
whether he is eaten by the wolf or dies of disease or starvation. He
has to die any way, and the particular way is unimportant. The wolf is
simply one of the limiting forces upon sheep, and if he were removed
others would come into play. The sheep, left to himself, would still
give a practical illustration of the doctrine of Malth