40 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



dislocation always entails destruction. The risks of disloca 

 tion are as great in the case of the higher as they are in 

 the case of the lower organisms, or perhaps greater. So 

 long as a race subsists it is fit ; when it becomes unfit, it 

 ceases to exist. Nature selects the unfit for destruction, 

 and does not select the fit at all, but leaves them alone. 

 There neither are, nor can be, degrees of fitness, the differ 

 ence between a positive and a negative is not a difference 

 of degree, and the survival of the fittest is another pseud- 

 idea. 



Finally, the word improvement , when applied to the 

 process of forward evolution, means increase of power, 

 but not elimination of defects, or enhanced fitness to survive. 

 For the principles which bring about an accession of power 

 we must probably go to the organism itself. If purpose is to 

 be ascribed to nature, or the environment, it must be, first, 

 to provide by its own changes against a stagnant level of 

 life ; and, secondly, in so far as it is stable, to arrange the 

 results of its changes in classes, by cutting off those forms 

 in which the internal principle of change is abnormal. It 

 evokes order out of chaos, but is quite indifferent as to what 

 the elements of that order may be. 



The value of the general argument from evolution is this : it 

 embraces the whole of our experience ; and there is a strong 

 presumption that what is found true for the process as a 

 whole will also be found true for the subordinate processes 

 by which that whole is constituted. If pleasure and pain 

 were regarded by themselves, we might indeed observe, at 

 all stages of the world s history, a steady advance in both ; 

 but when we proceeded to inquire on which side the growth 

 had been most active, and how the balance stood at present, 

 we should be thrown back on the argument from incom 

 plete induction 1 , and left a prey to the prejudices, illusions, 

 and inexact concepts which rob it of all philosophical value. 

 When, however, we discover that there are good reasons for 

 believing (in the absence of exact measurements, knowledge 

 is beyond our reach) that the general process has been one 

 of the equal concurrent development of both of the contrary 



