but also against the threatening chapter of contingencies from within and without. Having reached the stage of social progress called individualism, where each one is entrusted with and must take care of himself, such a state of things must exist; and we must accept the good and evil of it together, the good being that we have large individual liberty of action, as the natural complement of the state; the evil that, under this system of universal competition and individualism, where each one thinks first and above all else of "getting on "-to use the significant phrase, which marks the essence of the system-there is a wider front exposed by the individual to the assaults of the formidable impersonality called Chance, and a consequent greater danger of lapse into the dreaded and dismal social abyss which hides the forlorn and hopeless host of the failures. It is true that the present is only a transitional stage in the great march of social evolution. True also that there are hopeful signs, too many and various to be misunderstood, pointing to the fact that the era of unmitigated competition and individualism is being left behind. Where competition has shown itself injurious, men are giving it up. The community of interest in so many departments of life is too evident, and the necessities of mutual support and aid and protection too pressing, not to produce a certain mutual understanding and merging of destructive internal competition amongst the units that compose a class, or who are associated in an interest. That very sense of mutual dependence, and of a community of interest, to which all society owes its origin, is now seen to be applicable to many subordinate classes and groups and sections of a modern complex society, applicable everywhere, in fact, where an interest common to numbers, however few, may appear. In such cases men seek, and they will seek yet more, to minimize hazard and chance to the individuals, by making all associated partners in a common fortune. But though men will continue to do so more and more, as society progresses, its necessity as well as its advantages being so obvious; yet they will not withal be able to dispense wholly with competition, either amongst associations, or the united interest, or nations, or even amongst individuals whose interest, though common in certain respects, may yet be incompatible in others with that of their fellows in their own class or association. While man remains man, even in the extremest conceivable type of a socialistic community, competition in some form must continue amongst individuals; as while he remains an animal, however far he may have transcended his lower animal origin, there must cling to him some of his old selfish and sensual nature. He may become a more social, a more intellectual, a more spiritual being, his development moving forward on all these higher lines, but yet the progress is slow, and the ideal goal will never be fully gained. We can hardly even imagine a time when the facts of anger, and envy, and jealousy, and acquisitiveness will be extinguished. "Virtue cannot," as Hamlet tells us, "so inoculate our old stock," but we will relish something of that which diverges therefrom. Neither the social, nor the sympathetic, nor the sacrificing virtues can ever be so far developed as to wholly fill up the area of life and exclude all interests antagonistic to others; and though it is conceivable that a competition having the good of others for its object may become not uncommon, yet such would still subsist side by side with the old egoistic competition for a share of the divisible satisfactions which two cannot possess or enjoy at the same time. This egoistic competition, though with slowly diminishing intensity, this conflict of interests, though within a slowly lessening field, evolution and the social sciences assure us must continue; and this part of the new teaching is so far ethically significant that it lies on the transcendental and ideal morality, either to refute it or to accept it and accommodate its own teaching to it. THE END. PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. London. A LIST OF C. KEGAN PAUL & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. ADAMS (F. O.) F.R.G.S.—THE HISTORY OF JAPAN. From the Earliest Period to the Present Time. New Edition, revised. 2 volumes. With Maps and Plans. Demy 8vo. price 21s. each. ADAMSON (H. T.) B.D.—THE TRUTH AS IT IS IN JESUS. Crown 8vo. cloth, price 8s. 6d. THE THREE SEVENS. Crown 8vo. cloth, price 5s. 6d. A. K. H. B.-FROM A QUIET PLACE. A New Volume of Sermons. ALBERT (Mary).-HOLLAND AND HER HEROES TO THE YEAR 1585. A LIFE'S DECISION. Crown 8vo. cloth, price 7s. 6d. 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