The struggle for existence has been one of the means whereby animal life has been developed and perfected; but now that it has become conscious and purposeful, in humanity, the apparently blind struggle is suspended at the higher level, and the weak and suffering are attended to and helped—not exterminated. There must always be disciplinary effort: but it can be effort for something better than bare subsistence; it can conduce to evolution of character, and development of soul. Mere struggle and survival is an inferior instrument of progress, and it can be superseded wherever it has done its necessary preliminary work. The Divine purpose is fulfilled in many ways; and far more can be expected of self-conscious evolution than of the long slow process which has rendered it possible. The kind of selection actually or best known to us is that which has been directed by human beings; and inasmuch as the highest human beings are themselves conscious of help and guidance, it is to be assumed that such help and guidance has been in constant activity all along, operating on, or rather in, the refractory materials, so as slowly to develop in them the power of manifesting not only life and beauty, but also consciousness, spiritual perception, and free will. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XII SOUL AND SPIRIT _Q. 12.  What is to be said of man’s higher faculties?_ _A._ The faculties and achievements of the highest among mankind—in Art, in Science, in Philosophy, and in Religion—are not explicable as an outcome of a struggle for existence. Something more than mere life is possessed by us—something represented by the words “mind” and “soul” and “spirit.” On one side we are members of the animal kingdom; on another we are associates in a loftier type of existence, and are linked with the Divine. * * * * * CLAUSE XII The highest of those who have walked the earth reveal to us what we, too, may some day be: they link us with the Divine, and teach us that, however pathetically defaced by our infirmities and distorted by our imperfections, we may yet reflect the image of God. [_Part of the following explanation is based upon a study of certain facts not yet fully incorporated into orthodox science, nor fully recognised by philosophy: it must therefore be regarded as speculation._]