I. 

 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 



i. "THE STRUGGLE EOR EXISTENCE." 



CHARLES DARWIN himself has told 

 us x that it was Malthus's Essay on 

 Population which suggested to him the theory 

 of Natural Selection. The constant tendency 

 of population to outrun the means of subsistence 

 and the consequent struggle for existence were 

 ideas that on ly needed to be extended^ from 

 human beings to the whole realm of organic 

 natu re in order to explain why certain inhe rited 

 variations become fixed as the characteristics of 

 de finite types or speci es. Thus an econom ic 

 treatise suggested the answer to the great 

 biological problem ; and it is therefore fitting 

 that tKe bi oloo-ical formula; should, in^ their 

 turn, be applied to the explanation of so cial 



1 Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, I. p. S3. Cp. 

 Letter to Haeckel, quoted by Grant Allen, Darwin, p. 67. 



B 



