CHAPTER II. ■ 



Natural Selection — "Instinct and Reason" — Instinct a Perfect — Reason an 

 Imperfect Guide. 



I PROFOSE, then, to consider separately and in relation to man 

 eacli of the methods by which organic evolution proceeds. 



Natural Selection. — Herbert Spencer believes that evolution 

 by a survival of the fittest — i.e., indirect equilibrium — plays 

 a progressively smaller and smaller part as the animal scale 

 is mounted, until, in the case of civilized man, the process 

 is mainly by direct equilibration. " While yet," says he, 

 " organisms had comparatively feeble powers of co-ordinat- 

 ing their actions and adjusting them to the environment, 

 natural selection acted almost alone in moulding organisms, 

 and it has remained almost the sole agency by which 

 plants and inferior orders of animals have been modified 

 and developed." He believes that as fast as the " essential 

 faculties multiply, and as fast as the number of organs that 

 co-operate in any given function increase, indirect equilibration 

 through natural selection becomes less and less capable of 

 producing specific adaptations ; and remains fully capable only 

 of maintaining the general fitness of constitution to conditions, 

 direct equilibration taking place, until at length among civilized 

 races the equilibrium becomes mainly direct, the action of 

 natural selection being restricted to the destruction of those 

 who are constitutionally too feeble to live even with external 

 aid. As the preservation of incapables is habitually secured 

 by our social arrangements, and as very few except criminals 

 are prevented by their inferiorities from leaving the average 

 number of offspring (indeed, the balance of fertility is probably 

 in favour of the inferior), it results that survival of the 

 fittest can scarcely at all act in such a way as to produce 

 specialities of nature either bodily or mental." 



