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gained lordship over the brute; outside the small combinations for securing the primal needs of life the struggle was ferocious, and, under one form or another, rages along the line to this day. 'There is no discharge in that war.' It may change its tactics and its weapons: among advanced nations the military method may be more or less superseded by the industrial, a man may be mercilessly starved instead of being mercilessly slain; but be it war of camp or markets, the ultimate appeal is to force of brain or muscle,.. and the hardiest or craftiest win. In some respects the struggle is waged more fiercely than in olden times, while it is unredeemed by any element of chivalry." (pp. 211, 212.)

It is thus of the extremest practical importance to see what is the real bearing of Evolution on social problems. We must examine the relation between biological laws and social faiths and hopes, if we would make our opinions self-consistent: and self-consistency is the negative test of truth. Such an examination is especially incumbent on those who profess to keep their minds open to all that science can teach, and at the same time to have at heart the cause of social reformation.

We

ought to have a reason for the faith that is in us. To test our scattered opinions and beliefs by bringing them together is the main function of a sound philosophy.

The phrase" survival of the fittest" is very apt to mislead, for it suggests the fittest or best in every sense or in the highest sense, whereas it only means, as Prof. Huxley has pointed out, those "best fitted to cope with their circumstances " in order to survive and transmit offspring. Now when we come to consider society, we have to deal with a very complex set of phenomena, and what is fittest in one aspect may not be fittest in another. natural selection implies no further morality than "Nothing succeeds like success. If the struggle for food and mates be carried on on its lowest terms, the strongest and the strongest

But

1 Art. in "The Struggle for Existence" in Nineteenth Century for Feb. 1888, p. 165.

only would be selected. But cunning can do a great deal against strength. Now we cannot be sure that a good combination of strength and cunning will be selected: strength in some cases, cunning in others is what we find by comparing different species of animals and different races of men. Again, the strongest and largest and in many ways finest animals are not necessarily those most capable of adapting themselves to changed circumstances. The insignificant may more easily find food and escape enemies. We cannot be sure that Evolution will always lead to what we should regard as the greatest perfection of any species. Degeneration enters in as well as progress. The latest theory about the Aryan race makes the Aryans come from the north of Europe, conquer the feebler races of the south, and, having proved its fitness in this way, prove its unfitness in another by being less capable of

surviving in a warm climate than they; so that an Aryan language may be spoken, where there remains little or no Aryan blood. Are we entitled to maintain, with regard to human races and human individuals, that the fittest always survive, except in the sense in which the proposition is a truism, that those survive who are most capable of surviving?

Further, we must emphasize the fact that the struggle goes on not merely between individual and individual, but between race and race. The struggle among plants and the lower animals is mainly between members of the same species; and the individual competition between human beings, which is so much admired by Mr. Herbert Spencer, is of this primitive kind. When we come to the struggle between kinds, it is to be noticed that

1 See Art. by Prof. Rhys on "Race Theories and European Politics," in New Frinceton Review, Jan., 1888.

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it is fiercest between allied kinds; and so, as has been pointed out, the economic struggle between Great Britain and the United States is fiercer than elsewhere between nations. But, so soon as we pass to the struggle between race and race, we find new elements coming in. The race which is fittest to survive, i.e. most capable of surviving, will survive; but it does not therefore follow that the individuals thereby preserved will be the fittest, either in the sense of being those who in a struggle between individual and individual would have survived, or in the sense of being those whom we should regard as the finest specimens of their kind. A race or a nation may succeed by crushing out the chances of the great majority of its individual members. The cruel polity of the bees, the slave-holding propensities of certain species. of ants have their analogues in human societies. The success of Sparta in the Hellenic world.

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