WILLIAM BATESON—-MORGAN 529 
science sanctions a system of freest competition for the means of 
subsistence between individuals under which the fittest will survive 
and the less fit tend to extinction. That may conceivably be a true 
inference applicable to forms which, like thrushes, live independent 
lives, but. so soon as social organization begins the competition is 
between societies and not between individuals. Just as the body 
needs its humbler organs, so a community needs its lower grades, 
and just as the body decays if even the humblest organs starve, so 
it is necessary for society adequately to insure the maintenance of 
all its constituent members so long as they are contributing to its 
support.’ 
“Tt is difficult to characterize the Australian addresses in a few 
words. There is so much that is excellently put with an abounding 
humor. The Melbourne address is a clearly reasoned statement of 
the standpoint of modern genetics as interpreted by Bateson with 
the necessary reservations. He gives a somewhat clearer statement 
of his attitude toward natural selection, pointing out that from what 
we know of the distribution of variability in nature, the scope 
claimed by natural selection in determining the fixity of species must 
be greatly reduced. ‘The doctrine of the survival of the fittest is 
undeniable so long as it is applied to the organism as a whole 
* * * but to see fitness everywhere is mere eighteenth century 
optimism. * * * Shorn of these pretensions the doctrine of the 
survival of favored races is a truism, helping scarcely at all to 
account for the diversity of species.’ Here we find the admission 
that natural selection may account for the ‘organism as a whole’ 
and for ‘favored races,’ but ‘scarcely at all’ for the ‘diversity of 
species’ which when all is said is not so different from much that 
Darwin himself was contending for. Bateson says at the conclusion 
of his address that it is with reluctance and rather from a sense of 
duty that he has devoted so much of his report to the evolutionary 
aspects of genetic research, the outcome of which is negative, ‘ de- 
stroying much that till lately passes for gospel.’ 
“The Sydney address extends some of the conclusions reached in 
the preceding address to ‘our own species, Man.’ It covers some- 
what the same ground as the Spencer lecture. Like the latter, it is 
rather pessimistic in tone, but is full of suggestions of good sense and 
pointed criticism. Its final recommendation, which is a little too 
general for daily use, to suggest to reformers that they should direct 
their efforts toward ‘ facilitating and rectifying class distinctions’ 
rather than to abolishing them, because, Bateson believes, the teach- 
ing of biology is ‘ perfectly clear,’ namely that man is essentially at 
present polymorphic and that men are born unequal. In a word, 
that the main differences are genetic and not environmental. 
