528 



LAWS OF MULTIPLICATION. 



less to the discipline described; they either may or may not 

 advance under it; but, in the nature of things, only those 

 who do advance under it eventually survive. For, neces- 

 sarily, families and races whom this increasing difficulty of 

 getting a living which excess of ferJi lifa*--^nt^rrrs, does not 

 stimulate to improvements in production — that is, to greater 

 mental activity — are on the high road to extinction; and 

 must ultimately be supplanted by those whom the pressure 

 does so stimulate. This truth we have recently seen exem- 

 plified in Ireland. And here, indeed, without further illus- 

 tration, it will be seen that premature death, under all. its 

 forms and from all its causes, cannot fail to work in the 

 same direction. For as those prematurely carried off must, 

 in the average of cases, be those in whom the power of self- 

 preservation is the least, it unavoidably follows that those 

 leftbehind to continue the race, must be those in whom the 

 power of self-preservation is the greatest — must be the select 

 of t heir generati on. So that, whether the dangers to exist- 

 ence be of the kind produced by excess of fertility, or of any 

 other kind, it is clear that by the ceaseless exercise of the 

 faculties needed to contend with them, and by the death of 

 all men who fail to contend with them successfully, there is 

 e nsure d a cons tant progre ss towards a higher degree of skill, 

 intelligence, and self-regulation — a better co-ordination of 

 actions — a more complete life.* 



§ 374. The proposition at which we have thus arrived is, 

 then, that excess of fertility, through the changes it is ever 



* A good deal of this chapter retains its original form ; and the above 

 paragraph is reprinted verbatim from the Westminster Review for April, 

 1852, in which the views developed in the foregoing hundred pages were 

 first sketched out. This paragraph shows how near one may be to a great 

 generalization without seeing it. Though the struggle for life is the alleged 

 motive force ; though the process of natural selection is recognized ; and 

 though to it is ascribed a share in the evolution of a higher type ; yet the 

 conception is not that which Mr. Darwin has worked out with such wonder- 

 ful skill and knowledge. In the first place, natural selection is here de- 

 scribed only as furthering direct adaptation — only as aiding progress by the 

 preservation of individuals in whom functionally-produced modifications have 



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