The thing which the evolutionist has discovered and put forward with considerable enthusiasm is this: that life in every form has tended to evolve from the simple to the complex, and only through a vast complexity or organization has it managed to attain this spectacle of things which we call life or beauty--division of itself, as it were. The complexity of the individual thing which we call a tree or a flower or an animal, or, if you please, a social state (and indeed those more or less abstruse things which we know as arts and sciences), are but a further evolution of the complexity of the world machine, and life has brought them about and apparently saved them to the world, possibly for the purpose of partial self-expression. At the same time there has always been involved in this process the law of the survival of the strongest or temporarily and accidentally most favored, a process which the humanitarians are never prone to accept because it belies the theory of saving anything except by a compensative condition of slaughter and neglect of other things less strong--or, as the phrase has it, unfit things. In the theory of the religionist and the moralist the horrific processes that work in the sea and the jungle, and other unsocialized and enigmatic phases of imminent life, are entirely outside the scheme of a just and merciful God or Creator, not countenanced by Him! When His will is known and His suggestions are obeyed, these will be overcome and disappear! Well, this may be true, only it does not appear from any material or mental examination of the scene. Even now, as we talk of sweeter and less avid processes which might be brought into play by a superior power, life is maintaining its ancient balance of evil and good, or extremities of one kind balanced against extremities of another. Even now, under the very noses of the religionists and the moralists, these processes are at work and show no sign of being abated. For every neighborhood of taste and comfort, witness the vast areas of poverty, poor taste, neglect, dull thought, inefficiency. For every comfortable man a lean one, or many. For every mind of the first order a million of a weaker, fumbling character. For every tender, Christ-like soul how many of another kind--avid, selfish, cruel, hideous almost! Are the poor governed by the rich--and well? Do the shrewd rule the ignorant, and to their advantage? Do the strong control the weak, and to their advantage? Are the inefficient well or badly housed, well or badly nourished, neglected, left to stew in their own juice of misery and live and die as best they can, or are they looked after, as the religionist and moralist suggest and hope for? Only the dull or dishonest among the moralists and religionists can, it seems to me, fail to perceive or dare deny what even the dull or the ignorant now being trampled upon do already vaguely perceive and understand.