ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE 3 



miracle that freed it forever from the danger of death by starva- 

 tion. But latent in that move were all the terrible possibilities 

 of the tiger, the alligator, the wolf and all the varieties of preda- 

 ceous beast and plant, parasitism and slavery. The device that 

 enabled the ameba to change its position in space of its own will, 

 and so increased its freedom immeasureably, meant the genera- 

 tion of infinite evil, pain, suffering and degradation for billions in 

 the womb of time. 



The Breeding of Inferiority 



Human history, being a continuation of vertebrate his- 

 tory, is full of similar instances. The invention of the stock 

 company, for example, furnished a certain relative freedom to 

 hundreds, a certain amount of leisure to think and play, and 

 independence to travel and record, and immunity from a daily 

 routine and drudgery. In turn, it bore fruit in miseries and 

 horrors multiplied for millions, like those of the child lacemakers 

 of Mid- Victorian England, who were dragged from their beds at 

 two or three oclock in the morning to work until ten or eleven 

 at night in the services of a stock company. 



A corporation is said to have no soul. The struggle for freedom 

 of every living thing has no conscience. Throughout the living 

 world, from ameba to man, parasitism and slavery together with 

 their by-products, physical and spiritual degeneracy, appear as 

 the after effects of the more vital individual's efforts to remain 

 alive and free. The origins of slavery may be seen in the parasit- 

 isms of the infectious diseases which kill man. The change from 

 parasitism to slavery was an inevitable step of creative intelli- 

 gence. In the transition evolution made one of those breaks 

 which it indulges in periodically as its mode of progress. 



The natural effect of slavery has been a selection of two sorts 

 of individuals along the lines of the survival of the adapted. 

 It has tended to perpetuate in the breed the qualities of the 

 strong which would make them stronger, and certain qualities in 

 the weak which would increase their weakness. For parasitism 

 and likewise slavery infallibly entail the degradation of certain 

 structures and an overgrowth of others by the law of use and 

 disuse. The type of organ which would function normally, were 

 not its possessor parasitic in that function, invariably degenerates 

 or disappears. Parasitic insects lose their wings. An entire 



