110 TEST CASES [ch. xi 



The only reply the selectionist can make is to say that the consti- 

 tution of the plant does not allow of the mixture of characters, 

 or, in other words, that structural considerations override 

 adaptational. And as this reply comes in, in nearly all cases, it 

 does not leave much room, if any, for gradual adaptation. 



The whole subject has suffered from the lack of proper thinking 

 out. Everyone can see the struggle for existence going on before 

 him at any moment. The individual who is in any way handi- 

 capped, be it by some physical disability, by poor health, by low 

 intelligence, by parental poverty (resulting in cheap schooling, 

 underfeeding, etc.), or by other difficulties, is on the whole the 

 one to be defeated. In the early days of the theories of Malthus 

 and of Darwin (which was based upon Malthus) the tendency was 

 to legislate (or rather not to legislate) in such a way as to leave 

 the struggle for existence uncurbed, the idea being that in this 

 way the best was brought to the top and the inferior left at the 

 bottom, if not killed out. The theory of "nature red in tooth and 

 claw" had, and still has, a great vogue. It was not realised that 

 the winners in the struggle for existence owed their success only 

 too often to some adventitious advantage which was not neces- 

 sarily part of their own equipment. Money, for example, pro- 

 viding the best food and education, was a great help. One has 

 only to examine the trend of modern social legislation to see how 

 we are drifting away from the old philosophy of the unrestricted 

 struggle for existence. Everything possible is now being done to 

 remove the handicaps that formerly were fatal to some of the 

 best men, and to give to everyone the best possible chance, and 

 there is reason to hope that in a few generations the results of this 

 work will show a great social advance. 



Man is all of one species, and it is worthy of note that in his 

 struggle for existence against members of other species, he has 

 owed his success not to the slight morphological differences that 

 distinguish his different varieties, but to internal adaptation of 

 brain, etc., leading to greater skill in handling the difficulties 

 that beset him. 



TEST-CASE IX. DIFFERENCES IN GENERIC RANK 



This test will be rendered more intelligible by aid of the figure (8), 

 in which A represents a family of two genera only, B a family of 

 intermediate size, and C a large family, both B and C being 

 imagined a good deal larger than here shown. All are supposed 

 accepted by the same systematists, to make their rank fairly 



