284 PROBLEMS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION 



sequences, whereas Natural Selection, if allowed to work freely, 

 would soon eliminate all who have a propensity to excess. 

 The children of the ne'er-do-weel must not suffer from the 

 folly of their father, and thus, natural affection, the fundamental 

 virtue that guided evolution in early stages, is struck at. And 

 these are not the only evils that human cleverness helps to 

 foster ; it brings about others of another class, and these 

 without the assistance of tender-hearted altruism. It enables a 

 man to devise ways of cheating his fellow-tribesmen or fellow- 

 citizens that may very possibly remain undiscovered. Hence 

 the growth of the anti-social sins, such as stealing and fraud of 

 all kinds. 



Benevolence and cleverness have combined to foster self- 

 indulgence and failure of natural affection, while cleverness, in 

 defiance of the general spirit of benevolence, has devised, and is 

 devising, a number of anti-social practices. Thus human society 

 might seem to be travelling along the road to ruin. Among the 

 lower animals Natural Selection never lifts its guiding hand. To 

 savages it t j oes not give a very free rein. But every advance in 

 civilisation is a blow dealt at Natural Selection, at any rate, at its 

 direct incidence. Vice still suffers, no doubt, but very often not 

 to the extent of elimination ; wealth, science, altruism, befriend 

 it. Altruism takes children that have been left by their parents 

 in the gutter, and brings them up in institutions, thus tending to 

 breed a race deficient in natural affection. And, lastly, clever- 

 ness finds under present conditions a better field than ever for 

 anti-social conduct of all kinds. 



To all these tendencies there is a powerful check. There is 

 the struggle between tribe and tribe, which in early times must 

 have been constant. The tribe in which vice and dishonesty 

 throve would be defeated by another tribe which had the corre- 

 sponding virtues. But this is only saying that a principle hitherto 

 undeveloped had come in to fill the great blank left by the retreat 

 of Natural Selection. Men even in a very early stage were no 

 longer eliminated inevitably and immediately as a consequence of 

 folly : the children of the worthless survived , social life offered 

 great opportunities to the man who was both selfish and clever 



