Literary Notices. xix 



organism, eie it could be selected. Every advancing step in the develop, 

 ment of mental symbolism and of the control it rendered possible must 

 have been presented to natural selection, was not in any sense evoked by 

 natural selection. 



Natural Selection and Social Evolution. Granting that natural selection 

 is a dominant factor in organic evolution, is it also the dominant factor in 

 social evolution ? I believe that in modern phases of social evolution 

 natural selection holds a quite subordinate place. 



So much IS said and written about the social struggle for existence ; 

 so largely does competition enter into all phases of social procedure ; so 

 conspicuously does the principle of selection, and election, meet us at 

 every turn ; that it may seem somewhat absurd to contend that natural 

 selection holds quite a subordinate place in social evolution. If not 

 natural selection, it may be said, at any rate a strictly analogous process 

 is not subordinate but dominant. 



Is the process strictly analogous ? I think not. What is the method 

 by which progress is secured by natural selection ? The elimination of 

 failures, that is to say of all those individuals who fall below mediocrity, 

 or their exclusion from all participation in the continuance of the race. Is 

 this true of social evolution regarded as a whole ? Are the failures elimi- 

 nated? Are they excluded from all participation in the continuance of 

 the race ? Do not the social problems of the day largely arise out of the 

 fact that the social failures are not eliminated but are here in our midst, 

 and that they multiply exceedingly ? Are not the checks to increase of 

 population mainly prudential? And are not the prudent — those who look 

 before they leap into marriage — for the most part those who are not social 

 failures? It is just because natural selection, or the elimination of the 

 unfit, is not and cannot be the law of development in a civilised social 

 community, that we are surrounded on all sides with the most difficult 

 social problems. 



Or look at the matter from a slightly different standpoint. No 

 account of social evolution would be complete which did not comprise a 

 consideration of progress in Art, Science, Literature, Morality. Now I 

 do not believe that anything analogous to natural selection, any process 

 of eliminating the unfir, has been the dominant factor in the evolution of 

 any of these higher phases of social endeavour. 



Psychogenesis and Sexual Selection. Sexual selection then differs from 

 natural selection in this: that whereas natural selection is a process by 



