THE MESSAGE AND PKOMISES TO MANKIND. 243 



relative increase. But even if there be not only a greater 

 absolute number, but a greater relative proportion of 

 such, there are more than compensating considerations. 



The greater demand on organs may have a double 

 effect : It may both produce fitness of faculties, and also, 

 if they are below average excellence, it may produce 

 further unfitness ; especially if, as in our modern life, the 

 work is itself becoming more complex and exacting. But 

 in a far greater number of instances, the more stringent 

 demands and severer competition of our more complex 

 social life merely make manifest and patent inherent 

 unfitness, without in any respect causing or increasing it. 

 The severer conditions serve the purposes of probation, 

 by discovering and disciplining excellence where it already 

 exists, while at the same time revealing inherent in- 

 capacity. This is the general rule ; the cases where com- 

 petition produces failure and unfitness, the exception. 

 Competition, indeed, is not to blame in general ; it is the 

 chance and uncertainty which accompanies the com- 

 petitive regime an accident which is no part of its 

 essence that mostly produces the mental failure, or 

 reduced nervous vitality, which, even more than lack of 

 brain, results in the various avenues of competition in 

 the loss of the battle of life. Happily, however, this 

 chance element, through the operation of various counter- 

 acting agencies constantly on the increase which tend to 

 produce a solidarity in men's fortunes, is Being constantly 

 reduced within narrower limits. But while the chance 

 element is being minimized, the competition itself, in 

 some shape and in certain directions, must remain a per- 

 manent fact in human existence. It is even a most 

 important factor in furthering the utilitarian end of the 

 greatest ultimate good of men. It may indeed and it 

 must be mitigated, in certain directions; but it could 



