SOME POPULAR FALLACIES 



ethical beings, must look to the same process to help 

 them towards perfection. I suspect that this fallacy has 

 arisen out of the unfortunate ambiguity of the phrase 

 survival of the fittest. Fittest has a connotation 

 of best, and about best there hangs a moral flavor. 

 In cosmic nature, however, what is fittest depends upon 

 the conditions. Long ago I ventured to point out that 

 if our hemisphere were to cool again, the survival of the 

 fittest might bring about, in the vegetable kingdom, 

 a population of more and more stunted and humbler 

 organisms, until the fittest that survived might be noth 

 ing but lichens, diatoms, and such microscopic organ 

 isms as those which give red snow its color; while, if it 

 became hotter, the pleasant valleys of the Thames and 

 Isis might be uninhabitable by any animated beings save 

 those that flourish in a tropical jungle. They, as the 

 fittest, the best adapted to the changed conditions, would 

 survive.&quot; 



It is, then, a fallacy which must never be forgot 

 ten or mistaken that, because evolution has proved 

 the almost incredible baseness of the degrees by 

 which we did ascend, we are therefore necessarily 

 still ascending. That we are ascending I do not 

 doubt, but that facilis descensus Averni I also do 

 not doubt. The ground gained can be held only by 

 effort, and only by further effort can we go further. 



This, as I see it, is a fact of the first importance. 

 If, as might almost excusably be thought, we are 

 in the hands of a law which urges us irresistibly ad 

 astra, why need we take thought for the morrow 

 and for the men of the morrow s morrow? At 



&quot;Criticisms on the Origin of Species,&quot; Collected Essays, 



II., 91- 



283 



