We have moved on to another kind of struggle—to the kind which is known as industrial competition. And we are to come to the end of that in precisely the same way. We are to see the fittest survive, and grow, and establish themselves impregnably; and so long as there is room for competition they will compete; and when they find there is no longer room for competition, that by continuing it they are doing as much harm to themselves as to their rivals, they will put an end to competition, and no power on earth can prevent their putting an end to it. Any power which really tried to prevent their putting an end to it would simply destroy them, as two civilised nations would be destroyed if they could be compelled to keep on making war against each other. The great task of civilisation is the leading of men to recognise when these mighty changes have taken place. For so far I have spoken of only one side of the evolutionary process; I have shown the victory—but there are also defeats. Sometimes in the struggle between the individual and his environment, it is the environment that conquers. Sometimes the man or the society is not equal to the new task, and falls back; and the law of this is death. The stag which can run swiftly enough escapes, and is able to run all the more swiftly as the result of the race; the stag which cannot run quite swiftly enough becomes venison. The tiny shoot which can grow high enough finds the light, and becomes a mighty tree; its neighbour which could not grow quite so high, turns to mould. There comes now and then in the history of every living thing some moment when its future hangs in the balance; when it summons all its forces, and lives or dies. The butterfly faces such a crisis when it emerges from the chrysalis; the child when it is born. You have known such fateful hours in your own moral life; and you can go through history and put your finger upon them—here when the Greeks drove back the Persians, here when the Franks drove back the Saracens, here on the field of Waterloo, on the hills of Gettysburg. You would like to stay as you are, of course; for that is the least trouble. You have your routine and your habits, your old well-worn paths in which your thoughts move—you would like to stay as you are. But the curse of life is upon you—you cannot stay as you are. You have to go forward, or else to go back. When the crisis comes there is no escaping it—it _comes_. When the birth-pangs begin, either the child is born, or the mother dies; when the throes of revolution seize a nation, either the old forms are shattered, or the life of the people is crushed. There was once a reformation and a revolution in France; there was no reformation and no revolution in Spain. So in one case you have new life and abounding vigour—literatures and philosophies and sciences, and impulse after impulse without end; and on the other hand you have stagnation and ruin.