2l8 COOK 



nor principally because they are connected with an unjust divi- 

 sion of material wealth, but also because they rob the race of its 

 most capable elements. However cruel and pitiful the fate of 

 the incapable who are being eliminated in slums and factories, 

 deterioration is no less real at the other end of the social series, 

 and the loss to the race is far greater. 



Instead of dwelling, as has been customary, upon the fortuity 

 of variations and of evolution, we might often gain a clearer 

 insight by reversing the points of view and appreciating the fact 

 that it is the environment which is fortuitous rather than the 

 development of species. Whether a character be useful or use- 

 less depends entirely upon the circumstances in which the 

 organism is obliged to exist. Nowhere is this better shown 

 than in man himself. The qualities necessary to a safe and 

 prosperous existence in barbarism may be thoroughly disad- 

 vantageous in a member of a civilized community. The only 

 way in which the development of desirable qualities may be sub- 

 stantially encouraged is by furnishing conditions in which they 

 are advantageous, not, perhaps, in the way in which advantage 

 is commonly reckoned, but in ways which shall conduce to the 

 biological end of increasing, relatively at least, the better ele- 

 ments of the race, instead of tending to eliminate them. 



The causes and remedies of these conditions are not to be 

 considered here, the object being merely to illustrate from the 

 history of man what is no doubt a general experience of species 

 in nature, the change of the status of a character from useless 

 to useful and then to harmful, depending upon this fortuitous 

 relation between the character and the conditions. That only 

 one species out of the millions which share with us the surface 

 of our Earth should have developed intelligence, reason, con- 

 sciousness, and personality, has appeared very strange, but it 

 seems still more remarkable, when the vicissitudes of the journey 

 are considered, that even this one should have reached so unique 

 a distinction, and more mysterious yet that it should continue to 

 climb the same summit far beyond any environmental or selec- 

 tive requirements, and even in despite of such requirements. 

 Nevertheless, we are but doing what other species of organisms 

 and other races of men have done before, with the single excep- 



