3i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



some must go without a portion in natural goods if tlie resources 

 of Nature are in any degree limited. That the resources of Nature 

 are inadequate to provide for such numbers, with the extraordi- 

 nary increase, is a matter of course ; for if not so now, how soon 

 must it become so, as the increase goes on ? Nature solves the 

 problem in the simplest of ways: all the young born in the 

 same family are not exactly alike; "variations" occur. There 

 are those that are better nourished, those that have larger mus- 

 cles, those that breathe deeper and run faster. So the question 

 who of these shall inherit the earth, the fields, the air, the water 

 — this is left to itself. The best of all the variations will live, 

 and the others will die. Those that do, have thus, to all intents 

 and purposes, been " selected " for the inheritance, just as really 

 as if the parents of the species had left a will and had been able 

 to enforce it. This is the principle of " natural selection." 



Now, this way of looking at problems which involve aggre- 

 gates of individuals and their distribution is becoming a habit of 

 the age. Wherever the application of the principles of proba- 

 bility do not explain a statistical result — that is, wherever there 

 seem to be influences which favor particular individuals at the 

 expense of others — men turn at once to the principle of variations 

 for the justification of this seeming partiality of Nature. And 

 what it means is that Nature is partial to individuals in making 

 them, in their natural heredity, rather than after they are born. 



The principle of heredity with variations is a safe assumption 

 to make in regard to mankind ; and we see at once that in order 

 to come in for a part in the social heritage of our fathers we must 

 be born fit for it. We must be born so endowed for the race of 

 social life that we assimilate, from our birth up, the spirit of the 

 society into which we are reared. The unfittest, socially, are cut 

 off. In this there is a distinction between this sphere of selection 

 and that of the organic world. There the fittest survive, the 

 others are lost ; here the unfittest are lost, all the others survive. 

 Social selection weeds out the unfit, the murderer, the most unso- 

 cial, and says to him, " You must die " -, natural selection seeks out 

 the most fit and says, " You alone are to live." The difference is 

 important, for it marks a prime series of distinctions, when the 

 conceptions drawn from biology are applied to social phenomena ; 

 but for the understanding of variations we need not now pursue 

 it further. 



Given social variations, therefore, differences among men, 

 what becomes of this man or that ? We see at once that if so- 

 ciety is to live there must be limits set somewhere to the degree 

 of variation which a given man may show from the standards of 

 society. And we may find out something of these limits by look- 

 ing at the evident, most marked differences which actually ap- 



