CH. xvii METAPHYSICS OF NATURAL SELECTION 201 



besides natural selection (A). We have no similar 

 assurance that biological evolution in the sense of 

 progress is continuing among men have we not 

 heard of " the arrest of the body " ? If evolution con- 

 tinues it must owe its strength to something besides 

 the recurrence of famine. That is not frequent enough. 

 It does not "eliminate" severely enough to enforce 

 progress, even if it tends that way. 



On the other hand, famine has been no rare thing 

 among savages no rare thing even in the history of 

 the civilised world. For good or for evil, elimination 

 has acted on mankind through this agency ; and yet 

 every civilised government, even the hardest, is ashamed 

 of famine, and overwhelmed with a sense of defeat when 

 its people are starved. Probably, if famine were 

 allowed to stalk the world unchecked, we should see the 

 selection of a corresponding physical type in the human 

 races ; a low type ; prolific ; tenacious of bare existence ; 

 never rising much above the margin of subsistence and 

 possible survival. The upward path lies elsewhere. 



Pestilence is another eliminating agency which takes 

 the weak and spares the strong, though it is much more 

 likely than famine to leave behind it dangerous and 

 enfeebling " dregs " in those who recover. It has been 

 supposed, indeed, that the Jewish race owes some of 

 its health to the fact that the hideously insanitary 

 conditions of the mediaeval ghettos killed off the 

 weak. Strange if the most sanitary and the least 

 sanitary conditions should alike result in producing a 

 healthy human type ! But there seems every probability 

 that the Jews were already one of the toughest of 

 human stocks when they entered that furnace. They 

 emerged hardened still further ; ordinary human races 

 might have succumbed. If we fell back on " natural 



