Selection in Mankind 469 



of Species has been especially attached, as everyone knows, to the 

 doctrines of " natural selection " and of " struggle for existence," 

 completed by the notion of " individual variation." These doctrines 

 were turned to account by very different schools of social philosophy. 

 Pessimistic and optimistic, aristocratic and democratic, individualistic 

 and socialistic systems were to war with each other for years by 

 casting scraps of Darwinism at each others' heads. 



It was the spectacle of human contrivance that suggested to 

 Darwin his conception of natural selection. It was in studying 

 the methods of pigeon breeders that he divined the processes by 

 which nature, in the absence of design, obtains analogous results in 

 the differentiation of types. As soon as the importance of artificial 

 selection in the transformation of species of animals was understood, 

 reflection naturally turned to the human species, and the question 

 arose, How far do men observe, in connection with themselves, 

 those laws of which they make practical application in the case of 

 animals ? Here we come upon one of the ideas which guided the 

 researches of Galton, Darwin's cousin. The author of Inquiries into 

 Human Faculty and its Development 1 , has often expressed his surprise 

 that, considering all the precautions taken, for example, in the breeding 

 of horses, none whatever are taken in the breeding of the human 

 species. It seems to be forgotten that the species suffers when the 

 "fittest" are not able to perpetuate their type. Ritchie, in his 

 Darwinism and Polities' 2 reminds us of Darwin's remark that the insti- 

 tution of the peerage might be defended on the ground that peers, owing 

 to the prestige they enjoy, are enabled to select as wives " the most 

 beautiful and charming women out of the lower ranks 3 ." But, says 

 Galton, it is as often as not " heiresses " that they pick out, and birth 

 statistics seem to show that these are either less robust or less fecund 

 than others. The truth is that considerations continue to preside 

 over marriage which are entirely foreign to the improvement of type, 

 much as this is a condition of general progress. Hence the impor- 

 tance of completing Odin's and De Candolle's statistics which are 

 designed to show how characters are incorporated in organisms, how 

 they are transmitted, how lost, and according to what law eugenic 

 elements depart from the mean or return to it. 



But thinkers do not always content themselves with under- 

 taking merely the minute researches which the idea of Selection 

 suggests. They are eager to defend this or that thesis. In the 

 name of this idea certain social anthropologists have recast the 

 conception of the process of civilisation, and have affirmed that 



1 Inquiries into Human Faculty, pp. 1, 2, 3sq., London, 1883. 



2 Darwinism and Politics, pp. 9, 22, London, 1889. 



3 Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, n. p. 385. 



