154 SUPER-ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



selection. Till now this last has only been tried 

 with flowers, vegetables, and animals, because 

 natural human discrimination has not extended 

 further. 



To complete the analogy of this instance, we will 

 say that without the initial force there would be 

 no starting either of the struggle for life in the 

 brutes nor artificial selection for the man of the 

 future ; just as the watch would not go without the 

 elasticity of the spring. 



We think, therefore, that we can understand the 

 true value of the law of the struggle for life, which 

 is only a complementary, never a principal, factor, 

 much less, as has been claimed, an essential one. 

 The tragic aspect of this law, and its analogy to the 

 struggle for life as far as concerns the human 

 element, were the reason that the economists and 

 writers on social science have allowed themselves 

 to be led astray, and even ventured judgments and 

 commentaries that do not apply to the biological 

 meaning of the struggle for existence. 



The first generic idea of the theory of evolution 

 was held by Lamarck, who considered that all 

 plants and animals descend, by successive develop- 

 ment, from one simple ancestral form. 



But note that, before Darwin spoke of the 

 struggle for life, as a means of natural selection, 

 man already practised what is called artificial 



