258 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [PT. IL 



principles in accordance with which natural selection has 

 determined the course of events. 



In considering the action of natural selection upon the 

 human race, we must first note how that action is, in some 

 respects, materially modified by social conditions. Among 

 inferior animals, even those which are gregarious, as the 

 ruminants and sundry smaller carnivora, the preservation 

 of any individual requires his almost complete adaptation 

 to surrounding circumstances. There is so little division 

 of labour, and consequently so little mutual assistance, that 

 all must be capable who would survive. With the earliest 

 manifestations of true sociality this state of things must 

 be somewhat altered. Even in the rudest actual or ima 

 ginable society there is some division of labour, and some 

 mutual assistance. Those who are less swift for hunting 

 or less strong for fighting may at least perform services for 

 the hunters and warriors, and in return will be more or 

 less efficiently fed and protected ; so that those who fall 

 below the average capability of the race are no longer sure 

 to be prematurely cut off, and thus the agency of natural 

 selection in keeping up a nearly uniform standard of fit 

 ness is to some extent checked. In the highly complex 

 societies which we call civilized, division of labour and co 

 operation have done much to obscure the effects of this 

 agency. From the cooperation which goes on to a greater 

 or less extent in all societies, and from the enormous hetero 

 geneity of man s psychical organization, it follows that there 

 are innumerable circumstances which may enable individual 

 men to survive, in spite of their falling considerably short of 

 the normal standard of the community and the age to which 

 they belong. This fact, as will hereafter appear, renders it 

 possible for man to have an ideal standard of excellence or 

 successf ulness in life, and is closely associated with the 

 genesis of the ethical feelings of approval and disapproval. 



But while natural selection among individuals &quot;rows some- 



