DARWINISM AND POLITICS. HARLES DARWIN himself has told CHA " us' that it was Malthus's Essay on Population which suggested to him the theory of Natural Selection. The constant tendency of population to outrun the means of subsistence and the consequent struggle for existence were ideas that only needed to be extended from human beings to the whole realm of organic nature in order to explain why certain inherited variations become fixed as the characteristics of definite types or species. Thus an economic treatise suggested the answer to the great biological problem; and it is therefore fitting 1 Life and Letters of Charles Darwin I. p. 83. Cp. Letter to Haeckel, quoted by Grant Allen Darwin, p. 67. A that the biological formulæ should, in their turn, be applied to the explanation of social conditions. "It is felt, rightly enough, that the problems of human society cannot be fairly studied, if we do not make use of all the light to be found in the scientific investigation of nature; and the conception of the struggle for existence comes back to the explanation of human society with all the added force of its triumph in the solution of the greatest question with which natural science has hitherto successfully dealt. Our sociologists look back with contempt on older phrases, such as "Social Contract" or "Natural Rights," and think that they have gained, not only a more accurate view of what is, but a rule available in practical ethics and politics. Evolution has become not merely a theory but a creed, not merely a conception by which to understand the universe, but a guide to direct us how to order our lives." The phrase "struggle for existence," as it came from the pages of Malthus, had a dreary enough sound; but, when this struggle for existence is shown to lead to the "survival of the fittest," and when it is seen to be the explanation of all the marvellous adaptations and of all the beauty of the living things in the world, it seems to gain a force and even a sanctity which makes it a very formidable opponent to have to reckon with in any political or ethical controversy." It is easy to see how the evolutionary watch-word can be applied. In Malthus the idea of struggle for existence. was a very uncomfortable one; but, when it comes back to economics after passing through biology, it makes a very comfortable doctrine indeed for all those who are quite satisfied with things as they are. The support of scientific opinion can be plausibly claimed for the defence of the inequalities in the social organism: these |