SURTIVAL OF THE UNFITTEST. 523 



5._N0TES ON SOUTH AUSTRALIAN PHYSIQUE AND 

 MORTALITY. 



By J. H. JJ. DA riDSON. 



(Withdrawn.) 



o- >I<»-o 



6.— THE SURVIVAL OF THE UNFITTEST. 

 By H. K. RUSDEN. 



(Abstract.) 



By natural selection organisms of all kinds possessing strength, 

 fleetness, or equivalent advantages, live and procreate ; while 

 others, without them, cannot survive. By removal thus of, say, 10 

 per cent, of the most incompetent, the average viability is raised 

 half as much, or 5 per cent. But promiscuous parentage tends 

 to mediocrity. The strong, swift, and hardy survive and propa- 

 gate ; the weak, slow, and delicate die. Thus the fittest survive. 

 The strong devour the weak, the swift the slows and savage man 

 kills all. Some he tames, as useful to him. He artificially selects 

 and carefully cultivates the best only, excluding the less useful 

 from parentage, and so improves the progeny more than 90 per 

 cent, in one generation. Darwin showed how breeders do this 

 persistently and wonderfully. But civilised man, though thus im- 

 proving domestic animals, does stupidly just the contrary with his 

 ow^n kind, which he not only does not improve, but persistently 

 degrades. He nurses and cultivates the criminal, the lunatic, the 

 defective, and even the incompetent and the unthrifty. The 

 medical profession is proud of preserving those whom nature would 

 exterminate, and never wisely selects suitable mates. Experience 

 has proved that mankind is as imjjrovable as domestic animals. 

 Lycurgus selected parents, and forbade the rearing of defective 

 children ; and Draco enforced a uniform deatli penalty for crime. 

 To this has been ascribed the great superiority of the Greeks for 

 many generations. An African tribe sold all its defective people 

 as slaves, and Winwood Reade says he never saw finer models. 

 So the Brahmin caste and Society Island chiefs produce splendid 

 types. Persistent degradation tends to extinction, which should be 

 averted and reversed. Improved choice of mates or parents must 

 now be left to public opinion, which requires enlightening and 

 cultivating. Fortunately many women are alive to this ; but the 

 young should be better instructed. The only practicable artificial 

 selection is the wiser disposal of those who fall into the hands of 

 the State as criminals, lunatics, &c. If they were consistently 



