188 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



There is another fallacy which appears to me to pervade the 

 so-called " ethics of evolution/' It is the notion that because, on 

 the whole, animals and plants have advanced in perfection of 

 organization by means of the struggle for existence and the con- 

 sequent " survival of the fittest " ; therefore men in society, men 

 as ethical beings, must look to the same process to help them 

 toward perfection. I suspect that this fallacy has arisen out of 

 the unfortunate ambiguity of the phrase " survival of the fittest/' 

 "Fittest" has a connotation of "best," and about "best" there 

 hangs a moral flavor. In cosmic Nature, however, what is " fit- 

 test" depends upon the conditions. Long since, I ventured to 

 point out that if our hemisphere were to cool again, the survival 

 of the fittest might bring about, in the vegetable kingdom, a pop- 

 ulation of more and more stunted and humbler and humbler or- 

 ganisms, until the " fittest " that survived might be nothing but 

 lichens, diatoms, and such microscopic organisms as those which 

 give red snow its color ; while, if it became hotter, the pleasant 

 valleys of the Thames and Isis might be uninhabitable by any 

 animated beings save those that flourish in a tropical jungle. 

 They, as the fittest, the best adapted to the changed conditions, 

 would survive. 



Men in society are undoubtedly subject to the cosmic process. 

 As among other animals, multiplication goes on without cessation 

 and involves severe competition for the means of support. The 

 struggle for existence tends to eliminate those less fitted to adapt 

 themselves to the circumstances of their existence. The strongest, 

 the most self-assertive, tend to tread down the weaker. But the 

 influence of the cosmic process on the evolution of society is the 

 greater the more rudimentary its civilization. Social progress 

 means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the sub- 

 stitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process ; 

 the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to 

 be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which exist, 

 but of those who are ethically the best.* 



* Of course, strictly speaking, social life and the ethical process, in virtue of which it 

 advances toward perfection, are part and parcel of the general process of evolution, just as 

 the gregarious habit of innumerable plants and animals, which has been of immense advan- 

 tage to them, is so. A hive of bees is an organic polity a society in which the part played 

 by each member is determined by organic necessities. Queens, workers, and drones are, so 

 to speak, castes, divided from one another by marked physical barriers. Among birds and 

 mammals, societies are formed, of which the bond in many cases seems to be purely psy- 

 chological ; that is to say, it appears to depend upon the liking of the individuals for one 

 another's company. The tendency of individuals to over self-assertion is kept down by fight- 

 ing. Even in these rudimentary forms of society, love and fear come into play and enforce 

 a greater or less renunciation of self-will. To this extent the general cosmic process begins 

 to be checked by a rudimentary ethical process, which is, strictly speaking, part of the 

 former just as the " governor " in a steam engine is part of the mechanism of the engine. 



