I PROLEGOMENA 41 



among this twentieth of the whole people that 

 numerous men, women, and children die of rapid 

 or slow starvation, or of the diseases incidental to 

 permanently bad conditions of life ; and as there 

 is nothing to prevent their multiplication before 

 they are killed off, while, in spite of greater 

 infant mortality, they increase faster than the 

 rich ; it seems clear that the struggle for exist 

 ence in this class can have no appreciable se 

 lective influence upon the other 95 per cent, of 

 the population. 



What sort of a sheep breeder would he be who 

 should content himself with picking out the worst 

 fifty out of a thousand, leaving them on a 

 barren common till the weakest starved, and then 

 letting the survivors go back to mix with the rest ? 

 And the parallel is too favourable ; since in a 

 large number of cases, the actual poor and the 

 convicted criminals are neither the weakest nor 

 the worst. 



In the struggle for the means of enjoyment, 

 the qualities which ensure success are energy, 

 industry, intellectual capacity, tenacity of purpose, 

 and, at least as much sympathy as is necessary 

 to make a man understand the feelings of his 

 fellows. Were there none of those artificial ar 

 rangements by which fools and knaves are kept at 

 the top of society instead of sinking to their natural 

 place at the bottom, 1 the struggle for the means of 



1 I have elsewhere lamented the absence from society of 



