EGOISM IN THE HUMAN RACE 239 



bers of civilized countries are victors in the struggle 

 for existence. With each century artificial law is 

 checking more and more the severity of the struggle 

 for existence to which man has ever been subjected. 

 With each successive generation we find greater 

 attempts made on the part of public statutes to 

 enable each one to obtain what he needs and to force 

 the government to protect the individual. The 

 advance of individualism forces the government to 

 try to free the individual from this struggle for life. 



Nevertheless, the struggle for existence has not dis- 

 appeared. If there were no restrictions placed upon 

 multiplication of mankind, the millennium would be 

 an impossibility. In spite of the attempt on the 

 part of man to end this struggle for existence by 

 artificial law, in spite of the immense expansion in 

 the size of his world as the result of better methods 

 of agriculture, the rapidity of multiplication con- 

 stantly threatens to renew man's contest with nature. 

 For a few years he may live in peace, but in time 

 the growing population will crowd upon the limits 

 of easy sustenance. Man's power of multiplication 

 is so rapid that had it not been checked by various 

 factors, the world, long since, would have been 

 filled to overflowing. But there are checks to unlim- 

 ited reproduction in mankind and these constitute 

 the real factors of his struggle for existence. 



In the civilized community of to-day natural selec- 

 tion is constantly weeding out the least fit and acting 

 upon mankind with a certainty that is as great as in 

 earlier times. But the problem as it concerns the 

 human race to-day is rarely a struggle for the exist- 

 ence of the individual, nor does elimination come 

 from inability to produce offspring. A family or 



