142 UNIVERSAL EVOLUTION 



which some are better adapted to their environment 

 than others, who are more efficient in building and 

 keeping society, to a high state of efficiency, and who, 

 by the consent of the units, are thus selected, is not 

 controlled by reason, but by evolution. The term 

 "struggle for existence," as used by evolutionists, is 

 not a conscious fight to the death, such as a battle 

 between two opposite armies. It does not require that 

 any one shall "consent to be driven to the wall." But 

 we all know, that a certain number of individuals and 

 societies of all kinds born, die in infancy, others are 

 dying at all times of life, for the want of some power 

 within them to withstand what others, who live and 

 thrive, have the power to do. Reason does not seem to 

 control it, and no "mutual aid" can control these sur- 

 vivals of the fittest. It is true, the survivals often do 

 not seem to us the best, but would they not seem so, if 

 reason really controlled it? But. as they survive, 

 nature must have thought them the best. They are 

 certainly the adapted, or they would not survive. It 

 is so, with the forms of society. Those that survive 

 must be the fittest, but they are not what our reason 

 would select in all instances. The real fact seems to 

 be. that nature pays no attention to the reason, or 

 desires, or the efforts of man. Man's evolution of 

 brain power, including reason, must be along the line 

 of natural laws, or it does not avail. If evolution by 

 natural selection is the law of development, then rea- 

 son is confined to discovering man's relation to this 

 law, and his conforming his human law to that. He 

 seems to have yet made but little progress in that rela- 

 tionship, and there is no way to make further progress 

 except by trial and repeated failure. Life consists of 

 such effort, to find a solution to this problem, and when 



