DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 77 



made to bear more than it now does, and that 

 therefore it will maintain more than its present 

 number of inhabitants, is true enough. But 

 only a complete failure to grasp the meaning 

 of the strucrele for existence, and the relation 

 between increase of means of subsistence and 

 increase of population could lead any one to 

 maintain that, absolutely, the earth can be 

 made capable of supporting an indefinitely in- 

 creasing number of inhabitants. If the checks 

 on population supplied by famine, war, pesti- 

 lence and vice be removed in any large measure, 

 the increase would in time outrun any possible 

 increase in the means of subsistence, even with 

 all that improved appliances and diminished 

 waste could do. Here, as elsewhere, human 

 beings must raise themselves above unthink- 

 ing animals and not trust to a kind Providence 

 in which they take no part. The course of 

 events, if left to itself, will act in the way that 

 we do, when we dispose of superfluous puppies 

 and kittens, but not quite so rapidly and 

 mercifully. We must become provident for 

 ourselves. But what is to be said of the 

 Darwinian objection, the protest " against the 

 higher races being encouraged to withdraw 



