DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 



so soon as we pass to the struggle between 

 race and race, we find new elements coming in. 

 The race which is fittest to survive, i.e. most 

 capable of surviving, w ill surviv e ; but it does 

 not therefore foll ow that the individuals th ere- 

 by preserved will be fittest, eithe r in the sense 

 of being those who in a struggle between 

 individual and individual would have survived, 

 or in the sense of beinsr those whom we should 

 regard as the finest specimens of their kind. 

 A race or a nation may succeed by crushing 

 out the chances of the great majority of its 

 individual members. The cruel polity of the/ 

 bees, the slave-holding propensities of certain 

 species of ants have their analogues in human 

 societies. The success of Sparta in the Hel- 

 lenic world was obtained at the cost of a fright- 

 ful oppression of her subject classes and with 

 the result that Sparta never produced one 

 really great man. How much more does the 

 world owe to Athens which failed, than to 

 Sparta which succeeded in the physical struggle 

 for existence ? 



But human beings are not merely, like plants 

 and animals, grouped into natural species or 

 varieties. They have come to group them- 



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