tage to their possessors, and the types which are most likely to survive. Physical strength, used remorselessly for individual advantage, will clearly make for survival; cunning, craft of brain, will enable its possessor to cope with and sometimes even overcome superior muscular force. The trampling out of the weak will be a necessary incident in the struggle and the stronger and abler surviving, they will transmit to their posterity the qualities which rendered them victorious in the fierce fight for life. Thus selfishness, absolutely necessary to survival in the earlier stages of the struggle, was one of the qualities hammered into and welded with the brute nature, till it became an integral part thereof; an unselfish beast of prey, could such a thing be found, would have a very short life, and by no means a merry one. Maternal affection among such animals is a case in point—the lioness will risk death for the sake of her whelps; and it seems tolerably clear that maternal affection could not have evolved to any great extent, in consequence of the disadvantage incurred by the animal manifesting it were it not that the care and protection thereby insured to the offspring made for the survival of the race in which the quality was evolved, and the advantage obtained in the general defence and nurture of the young more than counterbalanced the disadvantage befalling some adult individuals.
This love of offspring is the first step out of the complete self-centreing of the brute; it is very limited in its period of endurance, even when the animal has reached the stage of savage humanity, but still it is a step upwards.
The second step is the acquisition of the truth that in the struggle for existence "union is strength." An enlightened selfishness largely replaces the blind selfishness of the earlier stages, and partial surrender is made of possible and immediate individual advantages, with a view to the enjoyment of undisturbed and unmenaced possession of other advantages, and of the attainment of many only to be secured by united action. Most of the crimes occurring in civilised society are caused by the irruption of the primal blind selfishness into the enlightened selfishness of the majority.
The third step is the evolution of sympathy, an evolu-
