AND SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 93 



life everywhere, and at all times, only a small and 

 chosen minority can exist and flourish, while the 

 enormous majority starve and perish miserably and 

 more or less prematurely. The germs of every 

 species of animal and plant and the young individuals 

 which spring from them are innumerable, while the 

 number of those fortunate individuals which develop 

 to maturity and actually reach their hardly-won life's 

 goal is out of all proportion trifling. The cruel and 

 merciless struggle for existence which rages throughout 

 all living nature, and in the course of nature must 

 rage, this unceasing and inexorable competition of all 

 living creatures, is an incontestable fact ; only the 

 picked minority of the qualified " fittest " is in a posi- 

 tion to resist it successfully, while the great majority 

 of the competitors must necessarily perish miserably. 

 We may profoundly lament this tragical state of 

 things, but we can neither controvert it nor alter it. 

 " Many are called but few are chosen." The selection, 

 the picking out of these " chosen ones," is inevitably 

 connected with the arrest and destruction of the 

 remaining majority. Another English naturalist, 

 therefore, designates the kernel of Darwinism very 

 frankly as the " survival of the fittest," as the " victory 

 of the best." At any rate, this principle of selection is 

 nothing less than democratic, on the contrary, it is 

 aristocratic in the strictest sense of the word. If, there- 



