PHYSICAL EVOLUTION 213 



being reinvigorated by the infusion of fresh blood from below. 

 But the snake has only been scotched, not killed. And though 

 modern communities have greater power of resistance, yet the 

 evil has in the present day greater powers of attack than ever 

 before. Science and wealth advance more rapidly, hastening the 

 softening of the environment and hastening also in the race the 

 process of degeneration which consists in adaptation to soft con- 

 ditions. By enervating the lower strata of society, they strike 

 the social organism at its very foundation. The nation, like the 

 state of ancient Rome, has not a vigorous substratum of popula- 

 tion as its basis. 



Here it is necessary to guard against a possible objection. It Effect of 



, . . , . , , civilisation 



may be argued that it is not the race which deteriorates, but that on the 

 luxury has an enervating influence on individuals : they were individual 

 born strong with plenty of potential energy in them, but it 

 evaporates in the sheltered hothouse life that they lead. Some- 

 thing must be allowed for this, but I cannot help looking upon 

 it as an altogether minor factor. Nothing is more striking than 

 the smallness of the effect upon the individual of the softness 

 and comfort of civilised life. Lucullus, one of the most luxuri- 

 ous representatives of a luxurious age, carries on a series of 

 laborious campaigns with conspicuous vigour. Caesar, who lived 

 most of the first forty years of his life at Rome and lived like 

 other wealthy Romans, was none the less equal to a succession 

 of campaigns and years of almost unceasing exertion. The 

 same thing is, perhaps, more conspicuous in modern times. 

 There are instances of men who have lived lives of comfort and 

 even luxury and yet are able to go through all the hardships that 

 are inevitable in campaigning and exploring. But, of course, 

 when I speak of comfort and luxury, I mean merely the softness 

 of civilised life, a thing not incompatible with moderation. Long 

 continued habitual excess never fails to incapacitate a man for 

 great exertion. 



This resistance of the individual to the weakening effects of Some 

 luxury compels us to regard its bad effects as indirect. The easy eT ja cn r ce 

 conditions of life enable the weakly to survive. The strong and from 

 weak intermarry and the best strains deteriorate through blending 



