234. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



appropriating. The absence of cruelty would not alter the fact 

 that the fittest race would extend ; but it may insure that what- 

 ever is good in the negro may have a chance of development in 

 his own sphere, and that success in the struggle will be decided by 

 more valuable qualities. 



Without venturing further into a rather speculative region, 

 I need only indicate the bearing of .such considerations upon prob- 

 lems nearer home. It is often complained that the tendency of 

 modern civilization is to preserve the weakly, and therefore to 

 lower the vitality of the race. This seems to involve inadmissible 

 assumptions. In the first place, the process by which the weaker 

 are preserved consists in suppressing various conditions unfavor- 

 able to human life in general. Sanitary legislation, for example, 

 aims at destroying the causes of many of the diseases from which 

 our forefathers suffered. If we can suppress the smallpox, we of 

 course save many weakly children, who would have died had they 

 been attacked. But we also remove one of the causes which 

 weakened the constitutions of many of the survivors. I do not 

 know by what right we can say that such legislation, or again the 

 legislation which prevents the excessive labor of children, does 

 more harm by preserving the weak than it does good by prevent- 

 ing the weakening of the strong. But one thing is at any rate 

 clear. To preserve life is to increase the population, and there- 

 fore to increase the competition, and, in other words, to intensify 

 the struggle for existence. The process is as broad as it is long. 

 If we could insure that every child born should grow up to ma- 

 turity, the result would be to double the severity of the compe- 

 tition for support. What we should have to show, therefore, in 

 order to justfy the inference of a deterioration due to this process, 

 would be, not that it simply increased the number of the candi- 

 dates for living, but that it gave to feebler candidates a differen- 

 tial advantage ; that they are now more fitted than they were be- 

 fore for ousting their superior neighbors from the chances of sup- 

 port. But I can see no reason for supposing such a consequence 

 to be probable or even possible. The struggle for existence, as I 

 have suggested, rests upon the unalterable facts that the world is 

 limited and the population elastic, and under all conceivable cir- 

 cumstances we shall still have in some way or other to proportion 

 our numbers to our supplies, and under all circumstances those 

 who are fittest by reason of intellectual or moral or physical quali- 

 ties will have the best chance of occupying good places, and leav- 

 ing descendants to supply the next generation. It is surely not 

 less true that in the civilized as much as in the most barbarous 

 race, the healthiest are the most likely to live, and the most likely 

 to be ancestors. If so, the struggle will still be carried on upon 

 the same principles, though certainly in a different shape. 



