Racial Experience 



or disproved by actual racial experiments. The 

 results are recorded and handed down as the 

 verdict of history. 



You may say that natural selection is not as 

 effective in man as in lower animals. There the 

 fittest survives. But fit and unfit men survive 

 alike. The unfit individual keeps alive the unfit 

 creed or system. Thus the means of verification 

 which apply to animal appetites lose their effi- 

 ciency when applied to human beliefs. This 

 may be true to a certain extent. But while in 

 individuals and families natural selection acts 

 somewhat more slowly, it is not at all certain 

 that it acts any less surely. But a system or 

 mode of thought characterizes nations and races 

 even more really than individuals. And the com- 

 petition and struggle for existence between rival 

 races and civilizations, even when silent for a 

 long time, is w^aged even more relentlessly than 

 the battle between rival carnivora. Here natu- 

 ral selection works as relentlessly as ever, and the 

 fittest civilization characterized by modes of 

 thought best conformed to environment, and 

 therefore nearest the truth, is bound to survive 

 and to impress its creed on future generations. 



This does not mean that " whatever is, is 



135 



