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 l 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." 



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 



^'Criticisms on the Origin of Species," Collected Essays 

 II., 91. 



283 



