22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



general diminution of welfare ; and it must suffer remotely by 

 furthering increase of the inferior and, by implication, hindering 

 increase of the superior, and by a consequent general deterioration 

 which, if continued, must end in extinction. 



Second, that during early life, before self-sustentation has be- 

 come possible, and also while it can be but partial, the aid given 

 must be the greatest where the worth shown is the smallest — 

 benefits received must be inversely proportionate to merits pos- 

 sessed : merits being measured by power of self-sustentation. 

 Unless there are gratis benefits to offspring, unqualified at first 

 and afterward qualified by decrease as maturity is approached, 

 the species must disappear by extinction of its young. There is, of 

 course, necessitated a proportionate self-subordination of adults. 



Third, to this self-subordination entailed by parenthood has, 

 in certain cases, to be added a further self -subordination. If the 

 constitution of the species and its conditions of existence are such 

 that sacrifices, partial or complete, of some of its individuals, so 

 subserve the welfare of the species that its numbers are better 

 maintained than they would otherwise be, then there results a 

 justification for such sacrifices. 



Such are the laws by conformity to which a species is main- 

 tained ; and if we assume that the preservation of a particular 

 species is a desideratum, there arises in it an obligation to conform 

 to these laws, which we may call, according to the case in ques- 

 tion, quasi-ethical or ethical. 



II. Sub-Human Justice.— Of the two essential but opposed 

 principles of action by pursuance of which each species is pre- 

 served, we are here concerned only with the second. Passing over 

 the law of the family as composed of adults and young, we have 

 now to consider exclusively the law of the species as composed of 

 adults only. 



This law we have seen to be that individuals of most worth, as 

 measured by their fitness to the conditions of existence, shall have 

 the greatest benefits, and that inferior individuals shall receive 

 smaller benefits, or suffer greater evils, or both results — a law 

 which, under its biological aspect, has for its implication the sur- 

 vival of the fittest. Interpreted in ethical terms it is that each 

 individual ought to be subject to the effects of its own nature and 

 resulting conduct. Throughout sub-human life this law holds 

 without qualification ; for there exists no agency by which, among 

 adults, the relations between conduct and consequence can be in- 

 terfered with. 



Fully to appreciate the import of this law we may with advan- 

 tage pause a moment to contemplate an analogous law ; or, rather, 

 the same law as exhibited in another sphere. Besides being dis- 

 played in the relations among members of the species, as respect- 



