THE STATE VERSUS THE MAN. 173 



hardest labour to perform, who toil from night to morning in mines, or 

 unhealthy workshops, or on the sea in tempests, in constant danger of 

 death, are paid, in exchange for all these hardships, a salary hardly 

 sufficient for their means of subsistence, and which, just now, has be- 

 come smaller and smaller, in consequence of the ever-recurring strikes, 

 and the necessary closing of so many factories, mines, etc., owing to 

 the long-continued depression of trade. What rapid fortunes have 

 been made by stock-broking manoeuvres, by trickeries in supplying 

 goods, by sending unseaworthy vessels to sea to become the coffins of 

 their crews ! Do not such sights as these urge the partisans of prog- 

 ress to demand the State's interference in favour of the classes who 

 receive so inadequate a payment for their labours ? 



The economists of the old school promised that, if the laissez-faire 

 and free contract regime were proclaimed, justice would reign uni- 

 versally ; but when people saw that these fine promises were not real- 

 ized, they had recourse to public power for the obtaining of those re- 

 sults which the much-boasted " liberty " had not secured. 



The system of accumulating wealth and hereditary succession alone 

 would suffice to prevent the Darwinian law ever gaining a footing in 

 civilized communities. Among animals, the survival of the fittest 

 takes place quite naturally, because, as generations succeed each other, 

 each one must create his own position according to his strength and 

 abilities ; and in this way the purifying process, which Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer so extols, is effected. A similar system was generally preva- 

 lent among barbarians ; but, at the present day, traces of it may be 

 seen only in instances of " self-made men ; " it disappears in their chil- 

 dren, who, even if they inherit their parents' talents and capacities, 

 are brought uj), as a rule, in so much ease and luxury that the germs 

 of such talents are destroyed. Their lot in life is assured to them, so 

 why need they exert themselves ? Thus they fail to cultivate the 

 qualities and tastes they may have inherited from their parents, and 

 they and their descendants become in all points inferior to their ances- 

 tors who secured to them, by labour and industry, the privileged posi- 

 tion they hold. Hence the proverb, A pere econome fits prodigue 

 (To a thrifty father, a spendthrift son). 



It follows, therefore, that those who wish to see the law of natu- 

 ral selection, by the transmission of hereditary aptitudes, established 

 amongst us should begin by demanding the abolition of hereditary 

 succession. 



Among animals, the vitiation of the race through the multiplica- 

 tion of its inferior samples is prevented " by the fighting so universal 

 in the pairing season." In the social order the accumulation and 

 hereditary transmission of wealth effectually impede the process of 

 perfecting the race. In Greece after the athletic sports, or in those 

 fortunate and chimerical days of which the Troubadours sang, " the 

 most beautiful was sometimes given as a prize to the most valiant ; " 



