THE STRUGGLE FOE LIFE. 209 



result in the gradual perfecting of organisms upon the 

 whole, and the steady advance of the final type. In 

 fixing the eye on the murderous side of this Struggle, 

 it is therefore well to remember to what it leads. 

 There could be no higher end in the universe than to 

 make a perfect world, and no more perfect law than 

 that which at the same moment eliminates the unfit 

 and establishes the fit. Too frequently the moralist s 

 attention is diverted to the negative side, to what 

 seems the quite immoral spectacle of the massacre of 

 the innocent, the rout and murder of the unfit. But 

 in earlier Nature there is no such word as innocent; 

 and no ethical meaning at that stage can attach itself 

 to the term &quot; unfit.&quot; Fitness in the stormy days of 

 the world s animal youth was necessarily fighting- 

 fitness ; no higher end was present anywhere than 

 simply to gain for life a footing in the world, and per 

 fect it up to the highest physical form. The creature 

 which did that fulfilled its destiny, and no higher 

 destiny was possible or conceivable. The Survival of 

 the Fittest, of course, does not mean the survival of 

 the strongest. It means the Survival of the Adapted 

 the survival of the most fitted to the circumstances 

 which surround it. A fish survives in water when a 

 leaking ironclad goes to the bottom, not because it is 

 stronger but because it is better adapted to the ele 

 ment in which it lives. A Texas bull is stronger than 

 a mosquito, but in an autumn drought the bull dies, 

 the mosquito lives. Fitness to survive is simply fit- 

 tedness, and has nothing to do with strength or cour 

 age, or intelligence or cunning as such, but only with 

 adjustments as fit or unfit to the world around. A 

 prize-fighter is stronger than a cripple ; but in the 



