42 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS I 



enjoyment would ensure a constant circulation of 

 the human units of the social compound, from 

 the bottom to the top and from the top to the 

 bottom. The survivors of the contest, those who 

 continued to form the great bulk of the polity, 

 would not be those ' fittest ' who got to the very 

 top, but the great body of the moderately " fit," 

 whose numbers and superior propagative power, 

 enable them always to swamp the exceptionally 

 endowed minority. 



I think it must be obvious to every one, that, 

 whether we consider the internal or the external 

 interests of society, it is desirable they should be 

 in the hands of those who are endowed with the 

 largest share of energy, of industry, of intellectual 

 capacity, of tenacity of purpose, while they are not 

 devoid of sympathetic humanity ; and, in so far as 

 the struggle for the means of enjoyment tends to 

 place such men in possession of wealth and influ- 

 ence, it is a process which tends to the good of 

 society. But the process, as we have seen, has 

 no real resemblance to that which adapts living 

 beings to current conditions in the state of nature ; 

 nor any to the artificial selection of the horti- 

 culturist. 



a machinery for facilitating the descent of incapacity. "Ad- 

 ministrative Nihilism." Collected Essays, vol. i. p. 54. 



