DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 



political, religious,, or social reformer to sav e 

 his peopl e from destruction or decay by ind uc- 

 ing them to change a custom w hich, however 



hpnpfimTnnrp, pmrl in ^orne, r^perf-c:, has now 



bec ome mischievou s. Such attempts imply no 

 contradiction to the principle of modification by 

 natural selection, but are themselves an illustra- 

 tion of it. Suppose an animal, whose ancestors 

 lived on the land, takes to the water (or vice 

 versa) because circumstances have changed, cr 

 in order to escape from excessive competition ; 

 it may succeed better. When Themistocles 

 made the Athenians into a naval power, this 

 change was a quite analogous phenomenon. 

 The difference is, that what Darwin called (con- 

 fessedly as a mode of expressing ignorance) 

 the " spontaneous " variation in the habits of 

 the animal is supplanted by the de liberate adop - - 

 tion of a new habit among human bei ngs. 



Now among a ll the more advanced societies 

 we find this conscious, deliberate ad aptatio n 

 supplanting the unconsci ous and spontane ous, 

 tho ugh in the beginnings of the most success ful 

 i nsti t utions there is generally a very lar ge 

 element of unconsciousness in the procedure. 

 Thus the great discovery of representative 



D 



