Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/193

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ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY

inhere in the primordial being of the Actual, and is therefore false. So, too, the Darwinian pseudo-law of the “struggle for life,” with its unsocial corollary of the supreme right of the strongest, must be rejected, not simply as striking at the root of ethics, but as violating the Law of the Whole. Species can arise neither by the transfer of a mere identity of force nor by any number of “survivals” of what merely is or has been, but must come from Kinds in the primitive constitution of the Actual.

At this juncture, however, Dühring feels called upon to reconcile the fact of ascending differences with his principle of mechanical continuity, and to explain, moreover, the original transit from identity to difference — from the primal repose of the Actual to its unresting career of causation. But after manifold attempts, which all imply the unmechanical hypothesis of a conscious primal purpose in his Absolute, he finally takes refuge in the “mechanics of the future,” which is sure some day to unravel the mystery.

But at any rate, he goes on to say, our three laws lead us steadily and securely to the needed completing term in the theory of the world, by settling the supreme question of the character and value of life. This question he discusses in his work entitled The Worth of Life. He solves the