CHAPTER V. 



Natural Selection (continued)— Deficiency of Food only an Indirect Cause 

 of Death in Civilized Communities. 



When considering the struggle for existence among the 

 lower animals, we saw that it was of two kinds — (a) a 

 struggle for food ; (b) a struggle against adverse conditions 

 having no connection with the procuring of food. The chief 

 cause of weeding-out among the lower animals is probably the 

 inability to secure sufficient food, and the same is true of 

 savage communities. Unable to develop the natural resources 

 of the country (the most degraded tribes being even incapable 

 of tilling the soil), these find their supply of food a fixed 

 limited quantity ; some check to the tendency to increase in 

 geometric ratio is therefore absolutely necessary, and the two 

 most potent checks are probably war and infanticide ; occa- 

 sionally, also, famine, floods, and "cold cause great destruction 

 of life. 



In civilized communities, however, the deficiency of food 

 is no such dominant factor, the chief cause of death lying in 

 conditions having little or no immediate connection with the 

 procuring of food, conditions which we shall have occasion 

 presently to consider more particularly. No doubt the struggle 

 for food is an important factor even among civilized peoples, 

 but we might, in this case, more correctly say that the struggle 

 is for wealth rather than for food alone. There is, indeed, a 

 perpetual struggle for wealth and the benefits which it brings, 

 and no doubt in this struggle many are actually destroyed, 

 body and mind breaking down under the effort, and death 

 being thus caused indirectly by it ; but in the vast bulk of 

 cases it is not a matter of immediate life or death, and the 

 principle of survival chiefly applies in the sense that, in the 

 struggle, some succeed, while others fail, in securing wealth and 



