NATURAL SELECTION 4 i 



Finally, we must never forget that the process of 

 natural selection is a process of fitting the race to its 

 environment. Evolution does not necessarily imply 

 advance in qualities noble in themselves. The char- 

 acters which tend to survive in the struggle for life 

 are the characters which are of use to their possessors 

 in the existing circumstances. Change the conditions, 

 and other characters may become of dominant selective 

 value, and gradually permeate the race. This is the 

 most important principle to be borne in mind when, 

 by legislation or alteration in social customs, we are 

 modifying the environment. We must always re- 

 member that, besides the immediate and more obvious 

 effects of the changes we are introducing with the object 

 of benefiting an existing section of the population, any 

 adjustment in the environment will necessarily react on 

 the racial changes produced by natural selection. It will 

 affect in some way the relative rates at which different 

 sections of our people reproduce themselves and the 

 chances of the survival of their offspring, and thus 

 will modify slowly but surely the average character of 

 the nation. To take only one instance, if, by mis- 

 directed charity or unwise relaxation in the poor law, 

 we make life too easy for the wastrel, the loafer or the 

 unemployable, and at the same time do nothing to 

 check his superabundant fertility, we may be sure that 

 the qualities for which he is conspicuous will multiply 

 rapidly in our midst. It will pay to be lazy, incom- 

 petent and unemployed. If, at the same time, we 

 increase the burdens of taxation and administration on 

 hard-working and industrious families near the margin 

 of means natural to their class, whatever it be, we are 



