236 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



where such a quality is still required. The most civilized races 

 are, of course, also the most formidable in war. But, if we take 

 the opposite alternative, I must ask how any quality which really 

 weakens the vitality of the race can properly be called moral ? I 

 should entirely repudiate any rule of conduct which could be 

 shown to have such a tendency. This, indeed, indicates what 

 seems to me to be the chief difficulty with most people. Charity, 

 you say, is a virtue ; charity increases beggary, and so far tends 

 to produce a feebler population ; therefore, a moral quality clearly 

 tends to diminish the vigor of a nation. The answer is, of 

 course, obvious, and I am confident that Prof. Huxley would so 

 far agree with me. It is that all charity which fosters a degraded 

 class is therefore immoral. The " fanatical individualism " of to- 

 day has its weaknesses ; but in this matter it seems to me that we 

 see the weakness of the not less fanatical " collectivism." 



The question, in fact, how far any of the socialistic or reli- 

 gious schemes of to-day are right or wrong, depends upon our an- 

 swer to the question how far they tend to produce a vigorous or 

 an enervated population. If I am asked to subscribe to General 

 Booth's scheme, I inquire first whether the scheme is likely to 

 increase or diminish the number of helpless hangers-on upon the 

 efficient part of society. Will the whole nation consist in larger 

 proportions of active and responsible workers, or of people who 

 are simply burdens upon the real workers ? The answer decides 

 not only the question whether it is expedient, but also the ques- 

 tion whether it is right or wrong, to support the proposed scheme. 

 Every charitable action is so far a good action that it implies 

 sympathy for suffering ; but if it implies such want of prudence 

 that it increases the evil which it means to remedy, it becomes 

 for that reason a bad action. To develop sympathy without de- 

 veloping foresight is just one of the one-sided developments which 

 fail to constitute a real advance in morality, though I will not 

 deny that it may incidentally lead to an advance. 



I hold, then, that the " struggle for existence " belongs to an 

 underlying order of facts to which moral epithets can not be 

 properly applied. It denotes a condition of which the moralist 

 has to take account, and to which morality has to be adapted, but 

 which, just because it is a "cosmic process/' can not be altered, 

 however much we may alter the conduct which it dictates. 

 Under all conceivable circumstances, the race has to adapt itself 

 to the environment, and that necessarily implies a conflict as well 

 as an alliance. The preservation of the fittest, which is surely a 

 good thing, is merely another aspect of the dying out of the unfit, 

 which is hardly a bad thing. The feast which Nature spreads 

 before us, according to Malthus's metaphor, is only sufficient for a 

 limited number of guests, and the one question is how to select 



