300 



FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 



themselves. With higher civilization and an increasing 



recognition of the value of mutual help it is becoming 



more and more possible for those to live 



Mutual help ^j^^ ^^ ^^^ j^^jp j^^ descendants of 



DTcscrvcs tnc 



: , , these increase m number with the others. 



incapable. 



They are protected by the others. Thus 

 the future of hereditary weakness is a growing problem 

 in our social organization. 



Of course the conditions of life have never yet made 

 the " survival of the fittest " the real survival of the 

 best. The growth of civilization ap- 

 proaches this end, but has never reached 

 it. If this were reached, adaptation to the conditions 

 of life would be a nobler process than it now is. It is 

 not that the conditions of life are too hard. We would 

 not make them easier if we could. But the welfare of 

 humanity demands that they be made more just. An 

 easier world would be one in which idleness, vice, and 

 inefiiciency fare better than now, and energy, virtue, 

 and efficiency correspondingly worse. The premium 

 natural selection places on self-activity and mutual help 

 is none too great at the best and should not be lessened. 

 Nature is over-indulgent toward idleness rather than too 

 cruel. The degradation of life in the tropics comes be- 

 cause in those regions the stress of the human struggles 

 is distinctly lowered. The real " City of the Dreadful 

 Night" is not noisy, eager, struggling, unjust London. 

 It is some city of the tropics where action and virtue 

 count for nothing because there is no incentive to live a 

 life worth living, and no adequate penalty for stagnation 

 and inefficiency. 



It is easy to frame indictments against modern so- 

 ciety and its organization. We may see it as weak, 

 tyrannical, depressing, artificial, cruel, or unjust, as we 

 may give attention to its least favourable manifestations. 



