230 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



NATURAL SELECTION IN POLITICS. ' 



Br Prof. D. II. WIIEELEE. 



WHATEVER may become of Darwin's theory of natural selec- 

 tion, its worst foes must at last concede it the rare honor of 

 being reckoned the most fertile hypothesis ever proclaimed. It has 

 created a library of books on species, selection, and evolution, and it 

 enters more or less into most attempts at serious writing. It was to 

 be expected that it should turn up in politics ; but we were hardly 

 prepared for so brave an entry on that field as it makes in Bagehot's 

 " Physics and Politics." 



It is refreshing to know that Darwinism puts a more cheerful as- 

 pect upon physics in the social life of man than has been given to it 

 by Draper and Buckle. 



To Mr. Bagehot, the principle of natural selection applied to poli- 

 tics suggests the hopeful and beneficent side of law ; Dr. Draper's books 

 were preachments upon its awful and relentless aspects. 



There is a valuable truth in natural selection applied to politics ; 

 for it is conceded that history shows us a struggle of races, and we 

 who survive are ready enough to believe that the sti'ongest survive 

 because they are the best. 



The earlier attempts to put physical forces into their place in man's 

 social institutions, claimed a monopoly for them. The Gulf Stream 

 wrote "Paradise Lost " and Newton's " Principia." The new attempt 

 to trace these lines of law seems to promise success by leaving a little 

 for Newton and Milton to do. 



Physics work in harmony with morals. Morality is not a base and 

 ragged accident, nor is it a fated product of temperature ; it has rela- 

 tions to the weather, but the most important of these is its power to 

 make, through industry and thought, a pleasant summer in an ice- 

 bound city, and a grateful coolness in the torrid zone. 



The moralists are fertile in all forms of social power ; that is an old 

 truth, too stubborn to be talked down. Religion has value every- 

 where, even in making fighters. God-fearing armies are hard to beat ; 

 and a man with an honest faith in him is as ugly a customer to face in 

 fight as thirty degrees below zero. I hope nobody supposes that poli- 

 tics are without law. I know nothing so absurd as to believe in God 

 and deny law to history, unless it be to be atheist and deny it. In 

 truth, all of us shiver a little when we remember that God is just, or 

 take account of the consequences that attend our public errors. 



But the value of a truth is generally to be measured by its relation 

 to hope. The best conquer, the best live ; what an inspiration to 

 courageous effort to be the best nation ! 



All the moralities, decencies, cultures, worships, lift up, and strength- 



