to be thought of (the conception is set out more fully in
Chapter I.) as a sort of glorified reflex action. Cunningly
constructed as it was, it had no special significance in the
evolutionary scheme, and though it made man for a time
the dominant animal, yet the ultimate goal of its efforts
would be to establish an equilibrium which would prove, as
Mr. Spencer candidly admitted, the first stage of decay.
The Genus Homo had its place in geological time like other
genera, and like them would pass away, only unlike them its
fossil remains would never become a theme for the anti-
quary, because in the cooling of the earth there would be
no antiquarians. The teeming life of the world must
gradually disappear and give place in time to the primordial
silence.

The appearance of an upward process in evolution then
was illusory. It was due to the position of the human
observer, who could not clearly see beyond the segment of
the whole curve on which he himself happened to be placed.
This result was more fatally apparent when the conditions
of evolution were taken into account, and these bring us to
the second point at which the theory affected human life and
action. So far as there was anything like progress, it was
due to the internecine struggle for existence. But a little
reflection suffices to show that if progress means anything
which human beings can value or desire, it depends on the
suppression of the struggle for existence, and the substitu-
tion in one form or another of social co-operation. There
was here a conflict between the scientific and the ethical
points of view which threatened social ethics with extinc-
tion. The contradiction was masked indeed for Mr.
Spencer by his theory of the inheritance of acquired
qualities, and it was not until Weismann insisted on the
all-sufficiency of natural selection that it assumed its
extremer form. But the social implications of natural

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