Principles of western civilisation

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ment of social philosophy, however great and varied his qualifications in other respects, can any longer be said to be fully equipped for the discussion of those problems of our social development with which | the world is struggling until he has perceived, in general effect at least, the bearing of the change which has been effected on the process of our social evolution as a whole. Let us see, therefore, if we can, in the first place, bring into view the nature of the development which has taken place in the hypothesis of biological evolution since it left the hands of Darwin.

The main outlines of the Darwinian theory of the evolution of life are, in our own time, familiar to nearly all informed persons. It may be well, however, in order to bring more clearly before the mind their relationship to the subject with which we are about to deal, to briefly pass them in review.

The fundamental conceptions of the Darwinian theory are only two in number. We have, in the first place, the enormous power of increase with which every form of life, from the lowest to the highest, appears to be endowed; so that its numbers continually tend to press upon, and even to altogether outrun, the means of comfortable existence for the time being. “There is no exception,” says Darwin, “to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair.”? The increase of life, as Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace points out, is always in a geometrical ratio.” Linnzeus has calculated that, if an annual plant produced only two seeds—and there

1 Origin of Species, chap. iii. 2 Darwinism, p. 25. D