RATIONALISM AND SCIENCE 63 



misjudged the results of slavery, then the slave- 

 state would in the course of time crush out the 

 state which abolished slavery, and survive. 



There is then an ultimate test to which all 

 human endeavours, all plans and all institutions 

 must submit, the test of working, of fruits, of sur- 

 vival. It is a hard test, proceeding without fear 

 or favour, and ruthlessly trampling out whatever 

 will not endure it. This is of course no new 

 doctrine; and from the beginning of literature it 

 has been expressed in a hundred ways. The 

 Hebrew Psalmist wrote ' Such as be blessed of 

 the Lord shall inherit the earth, and they that be 

 cursed of him shall be cut off.' ' What is con- 

 trary to nature cannot succeed ' is the burden of 

 philosophy in all ages, and especially of the 

 greatest of all practical philosophies, the Stoic. 

 And when in the last century Darwin emphasized 

 the principle of the survival of the fittest, it was 

 but this old wisdom made new. 



The law of the survival of the fit and the 

 destruction of the unfit works in the whole field 

 of biology. And it works in human society. 

 But it does not work among men with the same 

 force and regularity with which it works among 

 plants and animals. For the free will of man, 

 however it be explained, is an existing reality : 

 and man has the power of modifying his sur- 

 roundings, even in some cases of dominating 

 them. When two states compete in the markets 

 of the world, that in which the labour is most efn- 



