ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 35 



munication of this evening very clearly sets forth the improper use 

 of the established doctrines of evolution by a class of philosophers 

 who fail to appreciate fully the necessity for construction pari passu 

 with destruction and who have lost faith in human institutions and 

 neglect the teachings of all human history. 



The Lamarckian doctrine of evolution was that of adaptation by 

 exercise. The hypothesis did not obtain wide acceptation until it 

 was expanded more fully by Darwin and his contemporaries into 

 the further doctrine of the survival of the fittest in the struggle for 

 existence through competition in enormously overcrowded popula- 

 tion. By this latter philosopher it was shown that competition 

 performed an important part in evolution, and that the Lamarckian 

 method gained its efficiency through the law established by Darwin. 

 Among the lower animals species compete with species, and indi- 

 viduals of the same species compete with one another, and as the 

 number of individuals produced is greatly in excess of those which 

 can obtain sustentation some must necessarily succumb, and in the 

 grand average it is the unfit that yield their places to those better 

 fitted to the conditions. With mankind this competition does not 

 perform the same office that it does with the lower animals, and 

 this by reason of the organization of society and of other human 

 activities, whereby men, to a greater or less extent, become inter- 

 dependent, so that the survival of one depends upon the survival 

 of others, and the welfare of one upon the welfare of many. But 

 competition still plays an important part in the life history of 

 the human race. Man in his competition with the lower animals 

 has so outstripped them in skill and power that he utilizes them for 

 his wants. He destroys some, and others he domesticates for his 

 purposes. It cannot properly be said that he longer competes with 

 the lower animals — in fact, he utilizes them. 



But man competes with man, and this competition is expressed 

 in warfare — public and private. In public warfare state competes 

 with state, and the question arises, does this competition, this war- 

 fare, ultimately result, in the average, in human progress? So far 

 as it is a competition between states do the higher and better 

 people survive, and the lower people succumb ? He would be a 

 bold man, indeed, who would assert that the victor is always the 

 superior man in culture, and who would divide and relegate the 

 victories of the world to the good and the bad, the wise and the 

 unwise, the just and the unjust. It is a task too delicate for any- 



