NATURAL SELECTION IN POLITICS. 231 



en, and vitalize a people ; and the purer they are, the more they are 

 worth as factors of nationality. 



It is worth while to try to be decent, to reform bad habits, and 

 fortify exposed places in our public life ; for the best is the longest- 

 lived. 



This is not very new ; a good deal of such preaching was wasted 

 upon the Jews ; but, after being sickened upon the doctrine that a fall 

 of temperature produces a given number of suicides, and that morals 

 have no influence in civilization, it is worth the cost of listening to a 

 sermon, to get back again, under a disciple of Darwin, to the old truth, 

 that it is well with the good, and ill with the evil, evermore on the 

 earth. 



The hopeful aspect given to change in national life by Darwinian 

 Politics deserves special notice, and seems timely. 



We are all afraid to change born conservatives; and we all want 

 something changed born radicals ; and we do change. All human 

 life varies incessantly; the new generation sees life in new aspects, and 

 rejoices in other colors. The variation comes in constantly; and it is 

 our safety. Our inborn conservatism would kill us off if the variation 

 did not help our inborn radicalism in the else unequal struggle. That 

 which is, like the bird in the hand, is worth two reforms in the bush, 

 for a contest. In short, nations grow, progress, thrive, through the 

 law of variation from inheritance. 



" One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new 

 idea;" the consolation is, that only in pain does progress get birth, 

 and that the things born are, on the whole, like the babies of any year, 

 a little stronger and better than the things which die to give them room. 

 Nor is this so because the moon is not made of green cheese, but be- 

 cause a beneficent law underlies human existence. The exceptions are 

 numerous ; so too are the small graves at Rose Hill, and yet there are 

 more men on the earth, on the whole, happier than their ancestors, 

 than there were fifty years ago. We must change ; it is our cowardice 

 or indolence that makes change a danger. The law deals generously 

 with virtue and strength. 



It is curious to mark how slowly we learn some of these simple les- 

 sons. A century ago, we respected, envied, the noble savage. The 

 contemptible creature was semi-divine to first-rate poets and states- 

 men. They bewailed society, and longed for nakedness in the woods. 



The same men knew that one Roman soldier had outmatched fifty 

 semi-barbarians in every struggle, and that noble savages fell into the 

 toils of the meanest civilized men in the slave-trade. 



Civilization is strength and happiness. Miss Fragilla may not get 

 all the new bonnets she wants ; but that pain is easier borne than the 

 " sound belashing " her ancestor got at her age, two centuries ago. 

 She may not be all we could wish, but no young man of our blood 

 would pass her by for a Choctaw princess. 



