772 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tlie fittest seems to have always been the survival of the strongest, 

 keenest, swiftest, or the shrewdest, sharpest, most cunning and 

 crafty. Nature, in selecting, seems to have no j)ity for the weak. 

 She crowds remorselessly to the wall all who are not capable of 

 sustaining themselves. 



The analogies between physical life and social life are so strik- 

 ing, that it is perhaps not wonderful that political economists have 

 applied this law of selection to the struggles caused by industrial 

 competition. And when teachers and thinkers have so applied it, 

 it is still less strange that, in the actual conflicts of industrial life, 

 many men have adopted it as a rule of conduct. Indeed, if it be 

 maintained that the science of political economy rests upon self- 

 interest, and that its predominant force is competition, it would 

 seem to be only a logical deduction that the struggles of trade 

 must go on in a similar manner, and with similar results, to those 

 that have occurred among animals. Even if it be urged that en- 

 lightened self-interest teaches that in the long run the welfare of 

 the individual and the welfare of his fellow-men coincide, yet it 

 may be replied that this coincidence is not complete and universal ; 

 and that, when self-interest is subjected to the stress of competi- 

 tion, it is very aj^t to result in pure egoism. Shall we, then, con- 

 clude that the rivalries of business, being but another form of the 

 struggle for existence, must be carried on in the same spirit, gen- 

 erating like qualities, and for similar ends, as those which have 

 accompanied the development of physical life ; that material prog- 

 ress can only be assured by the big fish eating the little fish ? 

 This is not a comforting conclusion to reach, but the important 

 question for us is, is it true ? 



Accepting the law of the struggle for existence as applying 

 to life in all its phases from low to high, we have first to note an 

 important difference between physical and social life. The laws 

 governing the first are inexorable; that is to say, the organism 

 affected can do nothing to determine the result. But in the 

 social life of men their volitions are part of the necessary condi- 

 tions. Herein lies an important difference between the methods 

 of the simpler and the more complex sciences. For, " as Comte 

 acutely pointed out, in the simpler sciences our object is gained if 

 we can foretell the course of phenomena so as to be able to regu- 

 late our actions by it; while in the more complex sciences our 

 object is gained when we have generalized the conditions under 

 which phenomena occur, so as to be able to make our volitions 

 count for something in modifying them." * In the physical sci- 

 ences the method of study is to eliminate one hy one the conflict- 

 ing conditions, until the necessary condition is reached and the 

 true cause discovered. In the social sciences the method consists 



* Fiske'a "Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy," vol. ii, p. 170. 



