LESSONS OF EVOLUTION 615 



urged upon us the importance of criticism of consumption, 

 for it is plain that in our expenditure we arc willy-nilly 

 ^ selective. Thus a tradition of consistent expenditure along 

 restricted materialistic lines must make for the elimination 

 of artists, musicians, and similar types who are the salt of 

 the earth. It condemns them to celibacy ; it lets them slowly 

 starve. Considerations of this sort may be exaggerated so 

 as to make life a burden too heavy to be borne, but it is j)laiii 

 that a community which is spending solely on things that 

 perish in the using cannot be on a sound line of evolution. 

 All expenditure that consistently promotes unhealthy oc- 

 cupations rather than healthy ones, that helps to foster and 

 multiply the feckless rather than controlled types, that makes 

 for sweated labour and slums rather than for well-paid 

 work and gardens, is necessarily anti-evolutionary. From 

 founding celibate fellowships at colleges down to advertising 

 for gardeners " without encumbrances ^\ every form of selec- 

 tion that tends to prevent good types from duly contributing 

 to the composition of succeeding generations is to be con- 

 demned in the court of applied biolog}^, often called 

 eugenics. That there may be a higher court of appeal is 

 not denied. 



"An outstanding fact of Animate Evolution is, that new 

 departures making for the welfare of the race become in- 

 grained and entailed as part of the adaptive organisation 

 of the creature. In the case of Man there has been a similar 

 enregistration ; it is idle to deny that there has been a lu'iTdi- 

 tary organisation of kindliness, helpfulness, cheerfulness, and 

 so on. But this hereditary organisation proceeds slowly, and 

 so we must trust greatly to the extra-organisnial heritage of 

 traditions, conventions, ideals, and the like which works 

 very potently both as a stimulating nurture, jirompting us 



