Survival of the Fittest. 453 



sympathy, and who were always prepared to give aid to each 

 other, and to sacrifice themselves for the common weal, 

 would be victorious over most other tribes. And this would 

 be Natural Selection. Tribes at all times throughout the 

 world have supplanted other tribes. Now, as morality is 

 one element in their success, the standard of morality and 

 the number of well-endowed men will thus everywhere tend 

 to rise and increase. 



Very difficult it is to form any judgment why one particu- 

 lar tribe and not another has been successful in the Struggle 

 for Existence and has risen in the scale of civilization. Many 

 savages are still in the same condition of degradation as 

 when first discovered. The greatest part of mankind has 

 never evinced the slightest desire that their civil institutions 

 should be improved. Progress is not, as we are apt to con- 

 sider, the normal rule in human society. Many concurrent 

 favorable conditions, far too complex to be followed out, 

 seem to determine human progress. A cool climate, it has 

 been remarked, by leading to industry and the various arts, 

 has been indispensable thereto, but if the climate has been 

 too severe, as in the Arctic regions, there is a check to con- 

 tinual progress. Pressed by hard necessity, the Esquimaux 

 have succeeded in many ingenious inventions, but they can 

 never attain, for the reason already assigned, to any very 

 great success. Nomadic habits, whether along the shores 

 of the sea, or over wide plains, or through dense tropical 

 forests, have in all cases proved detrimental. Perhaps, the 

 possession of some property, a fixed abode, and the union of 

 many families under a leader or chief, are indispensable requi- 

 sites for civilization, as such habits almost necessitate the 

 cultivation of the ground. From some such accident as the 

 falling of the seeds of a fruit-tree on a heap of refuse and pro- 

 ducing an unusually fine variety may probably have resulted 

 the first steps in cultivation, for if the fruit were profitable 

 and good for food, it would be a very dull intellect that could 

 not readily perceive, especially among a people that had 



