RATIONAL LIFE 295 



human life there is a freedom of action which is 

 absent from animal life. It is preparatory for the 

 acknowledgment, to be made only a little further on, 

 that with civilised nations/ so far as the moral life 

 is concerned, natural selection effects but little. 1 



With this reserve of statement as to civilisation, 

 there is recurrence to animal life, in a manner which 

 makes the difference of plane in the two cases more 

 conspicuous. In immediate connection with the 

 examples of some elimination of the worst disposi 

 tions in the midst of our modem civilisation, the 

 following passage occurs: In the breeding of do 

 mestic animals, the elimination of those individuals, 

 though few in number, which are in any marked 

 manner inferior, is by no means an unimportant 

 element towards success. This especially holds good 

 with injurious characters, which tend to re-appear 

 through reversion, such as blackness in sheep; and 

 with mankind some of the worst dispositions, which 

 occasionally, without any assignable cause, make 

 their appearance in families, may perhaps be rever 

 sions to a savage state, from which we are not re 

 moved by very many generations. This view seems, 

 indeed, recognised in the common expression that 

 such men are the black sheep of the family. 2 



The example in animal life is well chosen, fitting 

 in neatly with the analogy which popular language 

 supplies. It is impossible to take this gravely. The 

 familiar phraseology shows how readily we regard 

 moral deterioration as tending to the level of the 

 beasts. But, as we have said in stating the facts to 

 be explained, human degradation is much below any 



1 Descent of Man, p. 137. a 76. p. 137, 



