160 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART in 



Darwin's doctrine, that the individual organisms should 

 be fit or fittest to survive in the endless struggle of life. 

 This postulate, however, does not carry us very far. The 

 individual may survive, but the race will not survive or 

 preponderate unless the victorious adult organism is 

 able to bequeath its position to offspring, and thus to 

 reproduce its great qualities the congenital, if not the 

 acquired qualities in a subsequent generation. Of 

 course the converse is equally true. There can be no 

 transmission of qualities unless there is first, and for a 

 time, personal survival ! Therefore, Darwin's postulate 

 may occupy the first place in our list of requisites. But 

 the course of discussion has made the position clearer. 

 It is not individual organism that competes against 

 individual, but stock against stock. The prize of 

 survival goes not simply to individual strength, but to 

 individual strength plus an abundant healthy offspring. 

 Now there are two ways in which nature has secured, 

 and does secure, the maintenance of species. One is the 

 method of quantity, the other of quality. In the lower 

 forms of life, and in some which are pretty high, fecundity 

 is almost inconceivably great. But the superior method 

 is that of quality. Fewer of the offspring perish at an 

 immature stage, for they are better guarded and better 

 developed either before birth or while still under parental 

 care. The methods are alternatives. As quality rises, 

 quantity recedes. As care for offspring increases, the 

 number of offspring steadily diminishes ; * but every 

 species pretty well holds its own on a net balance. 

 One important side development of the method of 

 quality is the method of the egg, the nest, and the 



1 Does this not point to a variation which is not random ? Are we 

 really to suppose that, in the beginning, animal races produced families 

 of all sizes, indiscriminately, and tended them with all possible degrees of 

 care, until those with unsuitable proportions died off ? 



