THE ISSUES OF LIFE 313 



makes for real superiority. If the energy misdirected by 

 the facile acceptance of had biology were turned to prac- 

 ticable eugenics, to hygienic reform, to inter-national ad- 

 venture, if men looked out for the ^^ moral equivalents of 

 war ", there might be a way out of the impasse which Prof. 

 Karl Pearson pictures as inevitable if there is cessation in 

 the struggle of race against race. Are we not beginning 

 (to use Prof. Lovejoy's words) '' to recognise that the effort 

 to cram the moral ideas of civilised man into the rigid mould 

 of the natural selection hypothesis is an artificial and not 

 very promising enterprise " (1909, p. 99) ? 



Furthermore, when Man has recourse to internecine com- 

 petition among fellows, — to what is, let us say, remotely anal- 

 ogous to a primitive and crude form of the struggle for 

 existence — exhibited by amoebse, if not by rats — he cannot 

 console himself with the belief that this must result in the 

 survival of the fittest in any desirable human sense. For 

 the struggle for existence need not result in the survival of 

 the strongest, cleverest, or best. It never results in more 

 than the survival of those relatively more fit to the given 

 conditions, and these may be on the downgrade, not on 

 the upgrade. As a matter of fact, there is considerable reason 

 to believe that, as regards the members of either side, war 

 acts on the whole dysgenically, by sifting out those whom 

 the race can least afford to lose. 



IN CONCLUSION. 



It is not maintained that there are no shadows in ]N"ature 

 — ' wildness ', wastefulness, parasitism, and even, at times, 

 positive disharmony — but, postponing a discussion of some 

 of these difficulties, we are concerned here to point out that 

 although there is in the routine of Animate Nature much 



