288 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 



the black belt of the South, the swampy regions near 

 the sea, in which white people can not live, and where 

 the negroes are not subjected to the stress of industrial 

 competition. 



The condition of slavery is one favourable for human 

 degeneration. The survival of the docile is its essential 

 feature in slavery. There is no premium 

 n ^ P laced on individuality, no advantage in 

 intelligence, and a positive disadvantage 

 in the impulses of self-direction. A slave can not be a 

 man, and the qualities of manhood are checked and de- 

 stroyed in slavery. 



In the slums of the cities similar conditions obtain. 

 In the life of hopelessness there can be no premium on 

 hope. The "artful dodger " is a typical 

 ^ P roduct of the natural selection of the 

 slums. To be well born but brought up 

 in the slums means to be born to premature death. The 

 child of the slums, fitted to his environment, must come 

 of the lineage of moral decay. 



In the tropics, conditions favouring human degen- 

 eration are constantly present. The intense heat dis- 

 courages physical or mental activity, 

 Degeneration in hu fa H h ^^ { fa { } gur _ 



the tropics. , K 3 , 



roundmgs favours the weak, the vacil- 

 lating, the inert. No premium is placed on effort, and 

 there is developed a type of man to whom effort is im- 

 possible. The conditions of degeneration under the 

 tropics closely resemble those seen under ill-advised 

 charity. Nature is too kind and too indiscriminating. 

 As a result, we have as pauper races the descendants of 

 the once civilized and once active Arabs, Egyptians, 

 and Saracens. With the decline of effort goes the fail- 

 ure of personal will, and the growth of the philosophy 

 of fatalism, in which the human will is held to be of no 



