BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1249 



some success in focussing the consciousness of a large body of his 

 contemporaries. While the true analogies of human social variations 

 are to be looked for in, for instance, the undertaking of a war by a 

 community of ants, or the keeping of pets, or the keeping of slaves, 

 other social variations may depend to some extent upon the indi- 

 vidual biological variations of man and woman, as history and 

 biography sometimes surely show. 



Fifthly, the biologist has a great deal to say about selection. He 

 has to emphasise to the sociologist that, so far as biology knows, all 

 good things are established and furthered by sifting. Nature's sifting 

 being a good translation of natural selection. All through the animal 

 kingdom for millions of years a sifting process has continued, and the 

 sieves have evolved as well as the material that is sifted. In early 

 days among mankind there was much of this natural sifting — by 

 wild beasts, by flood and storm, by poisonous herbs. By many a 

 natural sieve was early man sifted. And still there continues in 

 modern mankind some traces of natural selection, in the case, for 

 instance, of certain discriminating diseases which kill off the weak 

 rather than the strong. But, as everyone knows, natural selection in 

 mankind has practically passed into abeyance, and that for two 

 reasons. One is the growth of social sentiment which prevents us 

 from being cruel in the present, though it does not prevent us from 

 being cruel to the future. By the growth of social sentiment — 

 humane feelings, as we say— we are prevented from allowing natural 

 selection to operate to any great extent. And the second reason, 

 which is so well emphasised in Trotter's Instincts of the Herd, is that 

 the very fact of there being a society extends a shield over types 

 which would perish unless the society sheltered them. For instance, 

 in a society of slave-keeping ants there may be members of the 

 "master" species who are not only unable to forage, but who cannot 

 even use the food when it is brought to them. They have to be 

 spoon-fed by the slave-workers. It is obvious that in a couple of days 

 without a society, these degenerate masters would all perish ; under 

 the segis of the society these impossible individuals, who require to 

 be fed by the workers of another species, continue to flourish. But 

 human society is always doing this sort of thing — it is protecting 

 individuals who without the protection of society could not live for 

 more than a short time. And this brings us to what Herbert Spencer 

 called the dilemma of civilisation. He stated it in two or three 

 sentences that ought to be displayed in letters of gold in some 

 prominent place in every city: "Any arrangements which in a 

 considerable degree prevent superiority from profiting by the 

 rewards of superiority, or shield inferiority from the evils it entails ; 

 any arrangements which tend to make it as well to be inferior as to 

 be superior, are arrangements diametrically opposed to the progress 



VOL. II LL 



