BIOLOGY AND ETHICS. 671 



BIOLOGY AND ETHICS.* 



Ey Sir JAMES CRICHTON BROWNE, M. D.,F. R. S. 



IN the case of civilized man natural selection is subject to nu- 

 merous and extensive limitations. The struggle for existence 

 still goes on vehemently enough ; but it is changed in character, 

 and instead of animal rapine we have industrial competition. 

 The brutal and relentless acts of self-assertion that in a savage 

 state secured the survival of the fittest that is to say, of those 

 best adapted to savage surroundings^ have been condemned as 

 unsuitable to a more artificial existence and are punished as 

 crimes, and the conflict is carried on by cunning devices which 

 abolish the weakest slowly and unobtrusively and do not outrage 

 certain moral feelings opposed to violence which have in the 

 meantime grown up. But, more than that, in social progress the 

 struggle for existence becomes in certain directions a surrender 

 not of the feeblest but of the strongest and the best. A recogni- 

 tion of the obligations which man owes to his fellow-men and the 

 promptings of " Love's divine self-abnegation " impose restraints 

 on some of the competitors who, instead of forcing their way to 

 the front, as they are well able to do, stand aside and allow them- 

 selves to be beaten by those less fitted to survive. To adapt the 

 illustrations of Malthus, Nature still spreads her feast for twenty 

 guests, while thirty stand by ready to partake of it, but, whereas 

 in primitive times the twenty strongest would have unhesitat- 

 ingly appropriated the sustenance, in these more virtuous days 

 fifteen of the strongest and five of the weakest secure it, because 

 five of the strongest have chosen to abrogate their natural claims. 

 The census returns clearly show that while the age of marriage 

 in this country steadily rises among the educated and affluent 

 classes, it remains painfully low in agricultural districts and in 

 the poorer quarters of the great towns. 



The interference with the struggle for existence which civili- 

 zation and ethical development involve is familiar to medical 

 men above all others, for their professional career is one sus- 

 tained endeavor to prevent the extermination of the unfittest and, 

 therefore, to check the operation of natural selection. It is theirs 

 to succor the victims who have been smitten in the fight, and 

 who, but for their aid, would perish ; it is theirs to preserve 

 weakly lives which left unprotected would be ruthlessly stamped 

 out ; it is theirs to circumvent conquering bacteria and so pre- 

 vent mortality and swell the millions contending for a bare sub- 



* From an address delivered at the opening of the session of the Sheffield School of 

 Medicine at Firth College, Sheffield, on October 2, 1893, and printed in the London Lancet. 



