But we must now return to the questions with which we started—the relation of socialism to the struggle for existence, and to social progress as dependent on the struggle for existence. As we have seen, the Darwinian theory of the struggle for existence has the widest application to human society and human history. But the struggle for existence is not the sole principle of social progress. Social progress proceeds from the interaction, the balance and harmony, of many principles. The general question of social development, in which that of progress is involved, must be regarded in the light of the following considerations. Only we must premise that they are not a contradiction of the Darwinian theory; they are to be taken as a complement of it, and a correction of the narrow and one-sided conception of the theory. 1. The political, social, and ethical development of mankind is largely a record of the endeavour to place the struggle for existence under regulation. Progress chiefly and supremely consists in the growing control of ethical principle over all the forms of selfishness, egotism, unscrupulousness, and cruelty called forth by such struggle. In other words, progress mainly consists in the growing supremacy of law, order, and morality over the excess of the self-regarding principle in which the individual struggle has its root. We do not say that this exhausts the meaning of the ethical development of man, but it is a most important aspect of it. Thus the ethical factor is the decisive one in human progress, but it has advanced _pari passu_ with the general social and political progress. We see it in the crudest and most elementary forms when man emerged from the darkness of pre-historic times, and it has gradually developed into a noble complex of ideals, informed by a growing knowledge and by widening sympathies. In short, human progress has been a continual effort towards the realisation of the true, the beautiful, and the good, in such measure as was attainable by each succeeding generation of the race. Not that the struggle for existence is hereby abolished. The struggle, and the regulation of it too, are carried forward into a further stage of progress, to be continued on a higher social and ethical plane. The human struggle generally is on a higher plane than the animal one which Darwin describes. It is a struggle on the plane of an intelligence which never ceases to develop, amongst beings who pursue social and ethical aims with growing clearness and energy. If the results still fall so far below our aims, it is because our intelligence and means of performance, though enlarging, are still very imperfect.