Belief in this alleged law has vitiated our natural science, our political science, our history, our philosophy, and even our religion. Science declared that 'the survival of the fittest' was a law of nature, though nature has condemned to extinction the majestic animals of the saurian era, and has carefully preserved the bug, the louse, and the spirochaeta pallida.
We dined as a rule on each other;
What matter? the toughest survived,
is a fair parody of this doctrine. In political science, by a portentous snobbery, the actual evolution of European government was assumed to be in the line of upward progress. Our histories contrasted the benighted condition of past ages with the high morality and general enlightenment of the present. In philosophy, the problem of evil was met by the theory that though the Deity is not omnipotent yet, He is on His way to become so. He means well, and if we give Him time, He will make a real success of His creation. Human beings, too, commonly make a very poor thing of their lives here. But continue their training after they are dead and they will all come to perfection. We have been living on this secularised idealism for a hundred and fifty years. It has driven out the true idealism, of which it is a caricature, and has made the deeper and higher kind of religious faith abnormally difficult. Even the hope of immortality has degenerated into a belief in apparitions and voices from the dead.
Nature knows nothing of this precious law. Her figure is not the vertical line, nor even the spiral, but the circle—the vicious circle, according to Samuel Butler. 'Men eat birds, birds eat worms, worms eat men again.' Some stars are getting hotter, others cooler. Life appears at a certain temperature and is extinguished at another temperature. Evolution and involution balance each other and go on concurrently. The normal condition of every species on this planet is not progress but stationariness. 'Progress,' so-called, is an incident of adaptation to new conditions. Bees and ants must have spent millennia in perfecting their organisation; now that they have reached a stable equilibrium, no more changes are perceptible. The 'progress' of humanity has consisted almost entirely in the transformation of the wild man of the woods, not into homo sapiens but into homo faber, man the tool-maker, a process of which nature expresses her partial disapproval by plaguing us with diverse diseases and taking away our teeth and claws. It is not certain that there has been much change in our intellectual and moral endowments since pithecanthropus dropped the first half of his name. I should be sorry to have to maintain that the Germans of to-day are morally superior to the army which defeated Quintilius Varus, or that the modern Turks are more humane than the hordes of Timour the Tartar. If there is to be any improvement in human nature itself we must look to the infant science of eugenics to help us.
It is not easy to say how this myth of progress came to take hold of the imagination, in the teeth of science and experience. Quinet speaks of the 'fatalistic optimism' of historians, of which there have certainly been some strange examples. We can only say that secularism, like other religions, needs an eschatology, and has produced one. A more energetic generation than ours looked forward to a gradual extension of busy industrialism over the whole planet; the present ideal of the masses seems to be the greatest idleness of the greatest number, or a Fabian farm-yard of tame fowls, or (in America) an ice-water-drinking gynæcocracy. But the superstition cannot flourish much longer. The period of expansion is over, and we must adjust our view of earthly providence to a state of decline. For no nation can flourish when it is the ambition of the large majority to put in fourpence and take out ninepence. The middle-class will be the first victims; then the privileged aristocracy of labour will exploit the poor. But trade will take wings and migrate to some other country where labour is good and comparatively cheap.
The dethronement of a fetish may give a sounder faith its chance. In the time of decay and disintegration which lies before us, more persons will seek consolation where it can be found. 'Happiness and unhappiness,' says Spinoza, 'depend on the nature of the object which we love. When a thing is not loved, no quarrels will arise concerning it, no sadness will be felt if it perishes, no envy if it is possessed by another; no fear, no hatred, no disturbance of the mind. All these things arise from the love of the perishable. But love for a thing eternal and infinite feeds the mind wholly with joy, and is itself untainted with any sadness; wherefore it is greatly to be desired and sought for with our whole strength.' It is well known that these noble words were not only sincere, but the expression of the working faith of the philosopher; and we may hope that many who are doomed to suffer hardship and spoliation in the evil days that are coming will find the same path to a happiness which cannot be taken from them. Spinoza's words, of course, do not point only to religious exercises and meditation. The spiritual world includes art and science in all their branches, when these are studied with a genuine devotion to the Good, the True, and the Beautiful for their own sakes. We shall need 'a remnant' to save Europe from relapsing into barbarism; for the new forces are almost wholly cut off from the precious traditions which link our civilisation with the great eras of the past. The possibility of another dark age is not remote; but there must be enough who value our best traditions to preserve them till the next spring-time of civilisation. We must take long views, and think of our great-grandchildren.
It is tempting to dream of a new Renaissance, under which the life of reason will at last be the life of mankind. Though there is little sign of improvement in human nature, a favourable conjunction of circumstances may bring about a civilisation very much better than ours to-day. For a time, at any rate, war may be practically abolished, and the military qualities may find another and a less pernicious outlet. 'Sport,' as Santayana says, 'is a liberal form of war stripped of its compulsions and malignity; a rational art and the expression of a civilised instinct.' The art of living may be taken in hand seriously. Some of the ingenuity which has lately been lavished on engines of destruction may be devoted to improvements in our houses, which should be easily and cheaply put together and able to be carried about in sections; on labour-saving devices which would make servants unnecessary; and on international campaigns against diseases, some of the worst of which could be extinguished for ever by twenty years of concerted effort. A scientific civilisation is not impossible, though we are not likely to live to see it. And, if science and humanism can work together, it will be a great age for mankind. Such hopes as these must be allowed to float before our minds: they are not unreasonable, and they will help us to get through the twentieth century, which is not likely to be a pleasant time to live in.
Some writers, like Mr. H.G. Wells, recognising the danger which threatens civilisation, have suggested the formation of a society for mutual encouragement in the higher life. Mr. Wells developed this idea in his 'Modern Utopia.' He contemplated a brotherhood, like the Japanese Samurai, living by a Rule, a kind of lay monastic order, who should endeavour to live in a perfectly rational and wholesome manner, so as to be the nucleus of whatever was best in the society of the time. The scheme is interesting to a Platonist, because of its resemblance to the Order of Guardians in the 'Republic.' A very good case may be made out for having an ascetic Order of moral and physical aristocrats, and entrusting them with the government of the country. Plato forbade his guardians to own wealth, and thus secured an uncorrupt administration, one of the rarest and best of virtues in a government. But political events are not moving in this direction at present; and the question for us is whether those who believe in science and humanism should attempt to form a society, not to rule the country, but to protect themselves and the ideas which they wish to preserve. But I agree with Mr. Wells' second thoughts,