CH. xvn METAPHYSICS OF NATURAL SELECTION 205 



with a gigantic influence, like war. Like war, too, it 

 has selected steadily in the wrong direction. The best 

 and finest spirits were withdrawn from family life ; the 

 inferior types were left to perpetuate their qualities in 

 offspring. 



We see then that famine may possibly show the 

 working of Natural Selection A within narrow limits ; 

 pestilence and disease, if they do anything positive, 

 must be ranked in Natural Selection C, as mere 

 accessories to some better force ; the fatal or sterilising 

 consequences of vice and crime do no more than protect 

 the rear Natural Selection B ; war and religious celi- 

 bacy select, but select pretty steadily on the wrong side. 



It does not appear therefore that natural selection 

 achieves much for progress, or much even for advance 

 of any kind, in any one definite direction, within human 

 affairs, when viewed biologically. The view of natural 

 selection implied in the doctrine of the " arrest" of the 

 human " body " is upon the whole confirmed. 



But, if it were the best thing in the world, mankind 

 cannot make use of natural selection. We must keep 

 each other alive and well, as far as we may ; humanity 

 insists upon it. In point of fact, the civilised races are 

 putting their chief reliance, for biological progress or 

 safety, upon forces of a very different kind. There is 

 first for we are speaking here of man's physique 

 the provision, by laws and by administration, of a 

 sanitary material environment ; next comes the advance 

 of medical skill, the diffusion of medical and sanitary 

 knowledge, public opinion, law (requiring and for- 

 bidding certain individual acts), morality, religion. 

 That is the line we must move on, whether we like it 

 or not. And we have no reason whatever to suppose 



