172 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



to become established, it would be necessary to annihilate the immense 

 existing edifice of legislation, and to return to the wild state of society 

 when primitive men lived, in all probability, much as do animals, 

 with no possessions, no successions, no protection of the weak by the 

 State. 



Those who, with Mr. Spencer and Haeckel and other Conserva- 

 tive evolutionists, are anxious to see the law of the survival of the 

 fittest and of natural selection adopted in human society, do not 

 realize that the animal kingdom and social organization are two such 

 totally different domains that the same law, applied to each, would 

 produce wholly opposite effects. Mr. Herbert Spencer gives an admi- 

 rable description of the manner in which natural selection is accom- 

 plished among animals : 



" Their carnivorous enemies not only remove from herbivorous herds indi- 

 viduals past their prime, hut also weed out the sickly, the malformed, and the 

 least fleet and powerful. By the aid of which purifying process, as well as by 

 the fighting so universal in the pairing season, all vitiation of the race through 

 the multiplication of its inferior samples is prevented, and the maintenance of a 

 constitution completely adapted to surrounding conditions, and therefore most 

 productive of happiness, is ensured." 



This is the ideal order of things which, we are told, ought to pre- 

 vail in human societies, but everything in our present organization 

 (which economists, and even Mr. Spencer himself, admit, however, to 

 be natural) is wholly opposed to any such conditions. An old and 

 sickly lion captured a gazelle ; his younger and stronger brother 

 ai-rives, snatches away his prize, and lives to perpetuate the species ; 

 the old one dies in the struggle, or is starved to death. Such is the 

 beneficent law of the "survival of the fittest." It was thus among 

 barbarian tribes. But could such a law exist in our present social 

 order ? Certainly not ! The rich man, feebly constituted and sickly, 

 protected by the law, enjoys his wealth, marries and has offspring, 

 and if an Apollo of herculean strength attempted to take from him his 

 possessions, or his wife, he would be thrown into prison, and were he 

 to attempt to practise the Darwinian law of selection, he would cer- 

 tainly run a fair risk of the gallows, for this law may be briefly ex- 

 pressed as follows : Room for the mighty, for might is right. It 

 will be objected that in industrial societies the quality the most de- 

 serving of recompense, and which indeed receives the most frequent 

 reward, is not the talent of killing one's fellow-man, but an aptitude 

 for labour and producing. But at the present time is this really so ? 

 Stuart Mill says that from the top to the bottom of the social ladder 

 remuneration lessens as the work accomplished increases. I admit 

 that this statement may be somewhat exaggerated, but, I think, no 

 one will deny that it contains a large amount of truth. Let us but 

 cast our eyes around us, and we see everywhere those who do nothing 

 living in ease and even opulence, while the workers who have the 



