THE DANGERS OF SOCIALISTIC LEGISLATION 461 



see how the process works by considering individual cases. 

 We will suppose a race of deer to be inhabiting a certain area. 

 Within this area are certain carnivora which prey upon them 

 but the deer can run faster than any of their enemies, who have 

 to depend upon cunning and surprises to catch them ; a new 

 species of carnivora, more speedy than any oi those already 

 there, migrates into this area : now some individual deer will be 

 able to run faster than the majority — for none is exactly like its 

 fellow — and only the faster will escape and produce young. The 

 next generation of deer will inherit their parents' characters with 

 variations, some towards greater, some towards less speed ; but 

 they will vary from a higher mean than the preceding genera- 

 tion : those with favourable variations will survive, those with 

 unfavourable variations will be killed. So things will go on, 

 each generation of deer becoming faster, until a racial mean is 

 reached in the characters involved in the quality of speed which 

 ensures a number of individuals escaping from the new and 

 unfavourable factor in the environment. This racial mean will 

 be kept up by the selection of inborn variations, those which 

 tend to lessen the speed of the animals being eliminated. In 

 this manner, either apparently new characters are produced or 

 existing characters are maintained at a high standard by natural 

 selection. Of course, if the selection be too stringent, a race or 

 species may be entirely exterminated before there has been time 

 for the new characters to be produced, as would have happened 

 had the new carnivora been so numerous and their speed so 

 great, in the case of our deer, that none of the deer had been 

 able to escape. 



There is another matter which claims attention before the 

 consideration of the manner in which selection is acting at the 

 present time in the case of civilised man is taken in hand. This 

 is, that as soon as a character ceases to be the subject of selection 

 — in other words, as soon as the environment ceases to be detri 

 mental to those individuals who do not possess it or advantageous 

 to those who do — the character begins to disappear. A good 

 example of this is the blind cave fish, whose ancestors possessed 

 functional eyes, as is shown by the fact that they all possess 

 undeveloped eyes. Being useless in the dark, functional eyes, 

 however, give their possessors no advantage either in obtaining 

 food or in escaping from their enemies or in any other way. 

 Selection having ceased to act in the maintenance of this character 



