226 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



has relation only to the power of reproduction. 

 Those animals that are able to produce for posterity 

 abundant and vigorous offspring are the only ones 

 ''selected" by this law. All secondary successes and 

 failures — commercial, social, political, financial — ' 

 must be carefully excluded from the problem, and 

 attention given only to factors that affect man in his 

 powers to leave offspring. In the struggle to fulfill 

 this end mankind has had to contend with three dif- 

 ferent factors. 



Struggle with Lower Animals 



The first factor is the problem of man's relation 

 to other animals. The contest of mankind with his 

 larger foes in nature has all but ceased. In his early 

 history, when he was first learning to use crude 

 weapons, we must believe that he carried on a vigor- 

 ous, prolonged, and perhaps a doubtful struggle with 

 his animal foes. But that time long since passed. 

 Long ago he made himself absolute master of all his 

 noble enemies; so that our very earliest knowledge 

 of him as man shows him clearly superior to the 

 whole animal kingdom. His conquest over animals 

 was complete, and, while it is true that the con- 

 test still continues incidentally among men living in 

 contact with wild animals, it is no less true that 

 throughout the history of mankind the human indi- 

 vidual is the victor in the test. We can no longer 

 look upon the struggle with lower animals as form- 

 ing a factor in the problem of human natural selec- 

 tion. 



With certain of the smaller animals the contest is 



not over. AVlien it comes to a competition with 



. animals whose strength lies in their great reproduc- 



