vi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



to " open competition " ? It is rather late in the day 

 to talk of " open competition " as a panacea for all 

 social ills. Those who really wish to trust to Natural 

 Selection in its original form, which operates by the 

 extinction of the unfit, must be ready to strip the 

 human race of all the painfully won results of civilisa- 

 tion and to return, first to barbarism, and then to a 

 general scramble for nuts in the primeval forest out 

 of which scramble, however, Natural Selection, in its 

 gradually ascending forms, would some day build up 

 civilised society again. Open competition might 

 give results of some value if every one were to start 

 fair, run on his own legs and carry equal weight ; but 

 open competition between one man in a sack with a 

 bundle on his shoulders, another on a good horse, 

 and a third in an express train is a farce, and a some- 

 what cruel one, when the race is being run for dear 

 life. Yet that is what our would-be evolutionary 

 politicians seriously propose ; and think themselves 

 "scientific" all the while! Natural Selection must 

 mean something else than this before we apply it in 

 practical politics. 



On the other hand, for Artificial Selection (which 

 Mr. Ball suggests as an alternative) a great deal may 

 be said : but the person who says it must be prepared 

 to be laughed at, even if he escapes the experience of 

 seeing "respectable persons taking off their coats and 

 making for him with anything that comes handy." 



' D. G. R. 

 / December, i S90. 



