590 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Do these favorites of Fortune, it is asked, who take no part in the 

 struggle for existence, constitute the portion of society which is most 

 highly endowed by nature ? Ought we to foster such a class for gen- 

 erations to come ? In fact, can it be that its continued and prosper- 

 ous existence has the highest justification ? 



Out of this preposterous condition of things, where the salutary 

 principle of natural selection is borne down by artificial selection, our 

 one hope of deliverance, we are told, is in the coming of a time " when 

 all the millions who day by day come into existence shall enjoy equal 

 rights of development, so that each individual favored of Fortune, be 

 his birthplace a hovel or a palace, each one endowed with talent or 

 genius, shall find ready prepared for him all the means requisite for de- 

 veloping his natural powers in proportion to their value, and for after- 

 ward employing the same for the common good." 



I can not accept as correct this explanation of natural and artificial 

 selection. Each individual has, throughout the whole course of his- 

 torical development, fortified his existence by all the means at his com- 

 mand, with property, with inherited station, by putting forth all his 

 powers of body or of mind, inherited and personal. Artificial selection 

 has a definite end in view : it aims at transforming for a special pur- 

 pose that which is offered by nature, and then maintaining the new 

 form for the same end. When the nobility, the great landholder class, 

 maintains its position and becomes rooted, we have not an instance of 

 artificial selection in the Darwinian sense, but it is the natural course 

 of things, however unnatural the result may seem to be. If this be not 

 admitted, then the whole education of mankind, and every arrangement 

 in the state or in society made consciously and with the object of add- 

 ing to man's happiness or developing his powers, must be accounted 

 instruments of artificial selection. And among the most artificial of 

 them all would be a regulation of the state which should insure unlimited 

 freedom of development to each individual's talents. 



At our point of view we are ever and again reminded that the idea 

 of the natural struggle for existence does not imply that the victorious 

 one is always physiologically, or, in the case of man, morally, the most 

 deserving. We might, but we can not, imagine an ideal state wherein 

 the most deserving shall always gain the victory, and thus we may 

 represent to ourselves a universal perfectionment as the end of develop- 

 ment. Hence we are not in the least pessimists ; but, on the other 

 hand, the innumerable evidences of progress which we see in nature, 

 both animate and inanimate, do not suffice to make our idea of the uni- 

 verse purely optimistic. Progress is an asymptote of the ideal of per- 

 fectionment, and in recognizing this we give free play to the tendency 

 perfectionward, without attempting on our own part to interfere. 



With all the certainty that is attainable by inductive proof, the doc- 

 trine of development teaches the brute origin of man. Whether 

 Pfeffel says aright — 



