LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 309 



the force of selection leads to degi^adation. In view 

 of these general laws some biologists have been 

 somewhat pessimistic over the action upon the human 

 race of the ethical instincts, which bid man to pre- 

 serve the weak instead of exterminating them as 

 nature does elsewhere — and have intimated that the 

 results will inevitably be a degradation. 



But as soon as man comes under the full influence 

 of social heredity there begins to act upon him a new 

 principle which tends to progress. In developing 

 society a new rivalry takes the place of nature's 

 struggle for existence, a rivalry that leads to ad- 

 vance, though in a different way. The social and 

 industrial rivalry that is found among man is some- 

 times called a struggle for existence, and compared 

 in its action to the struggle for existence among 

 animals. But such social rivalries must not for a 

 moment be confounded with a real struggle for exist- 

 ence, and whatever influence they have comes in, a 

 different way. Nature's struggle for existence 

 results in the extermination of the ill fitted. But in 

 the human race for supremacy success in any of the 

 lines toward which such rivalry is directed does not 

 result in extermination of the non successful nor does 

 it result in leaving the successful with a larger num- 

 ber of offspring, or with a greater chance of handing 

 their characteristics to the next generation by 

 organic inheritance. The most successful man in 

 human rivalry may be from nature's standpoint a 

 total failure since he may leave no offspring. It 

 often happens that the families of the world's lead- 

 ers soon die out. The Eoman Catholic clergy have 

 been great forces in the progress of civilization, but 

 not by means of the progeny they have left behind. 



