A REJOINDER TO M. DE LAVELEYE. 193 



"Social Statics" was published in 1851 ; Mr. Darwin's "Origin of Spe- 

 cies" in 1859. 



And now I pass to the main issue. In pursuance of his statement 

 that I wish society to adopt the survival of the fittest as its guiding 

 principle, M. de Laveleye goes on to describe what would be its action 

 as applied to mankind. Here are his words : 



" This is the ideal order of things which, we are told, ought to prevail 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 arrives, 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 at- 

 tempted 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, be 

 would certainly run a fair risk of the gallows" (p. 492). 



Now though, on the next page, M. de Laveleye recognizes the fact 

 that the survival of the fittest, as I construe it in its social applica- 

 tions, is the survival of the industrially superior and those who are 

 fittest for the requirements of social life, yet, in the paragraph I have 

 quoted, he implies that the view I hold would countenance violent 

 methods of replacing the inferior by the superior. Unless he desires 

 to suggest that I wish to see the principle operate among men as it 

 operates among brutes, why did he write this paragraph ? In the 

 work before him, without referring to other works, he has abundant 

 proof that, above all things, aggression of every kind is hateful to me ; 

 and he scarcely needs telling that from my earliest book, written more 

 than a third of a century ago, down to the present time, I have urged 

 the change of all laws which either inflict injustice or fail to remedy 

 injustice, whether committed by one individual against another, or by 

 class against class, or by people against people. Why, then, did M. 

 de Laveleye make it seem that I would, if I could, establish a reign of 

 injustice under its most brutal form ? If there needs proof that in 

 my view the struggle for existence as carried on in society, and the 

 greater multiplication of those best fitted for the struggle, must be 

 subject to rigorous limitations, I may quote as sufficient proof a pas- 

 sage from the " Data of Ethics : " premising that the word co-opera- 

 tion used in it, must be understood in its widest sense, as comprehend- 

 ing all those combined activities by which citizens carry on social life: 



" The leading traits of a code under which complete living through volun- 

 tary co-operation [here antithetically opposed to compulsory co-operation, char- 

 acterizing the militant type of society] is secured, may be simply stated. The 

 fundamental requirement is that the life-sustaining actions of each shall sever- 

 vol. xxvii. 13 



