DARWIN 



effect of the result will be of no value in that field. 

 Natural selection had the misfortune to fall into both 

 of these categories. Darwin, himself, felt that many 

 facts did not substantiate his theory and the accumu- 

 lation of facts, since his time, has steadily reduced 

 the value of natural selection as a scientific law. Of 

 the application of natural selection and of the strug- 

 gle for existence to sociology and ethics, he does not 

 seem to have had the least anticipation. He was 

 amazed and mortified to find himself the centre of a 

 bitter theological dispute and to be classed as an 

 atheist. 



A doctrine, which bases the entire progress of the 

 organic world on a bitter struggle for existence, from 

 which only the few which are the strongest, or fittest, 

 can survive, which accounts for the thoughts and the 

 noblest ideals of mankind as the success of the dom- 

 inant force, — such a doctrine is not a gentle idea. It 

 is difficult to see how anyone could fail to draw the 

 conclusion that the world is a scene of ruthless slaugh- 

 ter and that only by encouraging such slaughter could 

 the unfit be eliminated and the strong and fit be given 

 the chance to develop and continue the race ; yet Dar- 

 win considers such a conclusion as amusing. He writes 

 to Lyell : "I have received, in a Manchester news- 

 paper, rather a good squib, showing that I have 

 proved might is right,' and therefore that Napoleon 

 is right, and every cheating tradesman is also right.'" 



"^ Ibid., vol. II, p. 56. 



C 197 1 



