TO THE POOH. 251 



remedies were useless. Now, the socialist maintains 

 that the great social evils are due to our present social 

 system, that they could be cured by the necessary changes 

 in it, and are demonstrably incurable under that system 

 itself. Science, on the other hand, seems to affirm that 

 the causes are resident in human nature, in the repro- 

 ductive instinct which ever tends to produce a redundant 

 population; and she offers us two most unsatisfactory 

 remedies. The first is her new and universal medicine 

 of " natural selection," and the survival of him who can 

 best equalize his nature to his environment a formula 

 which, applied to human societies, virtually recommends 

 that the present state of things should continue; that 

 the purifying and eliminating process which has done so 

 well in the past should still go on or be applied more 

 stringently if greater results are required ; that in short,, 

 natural selection which only selects those who can 

 adapt themselves to their surroundings, subject to chance 

 and change, and which slays, or slowly saps the strength, 

 or pauperizes so many of the rest is to go on for ever, 

 and all will come right generations hence by this marvel- 

 lous curative process. The second scientific remedy is 

 the old and thrice-famed one of Malthus, so strongly 

 recommended by Mill the " prudential restraint," which, 

 however, contrary as it is to the teaching of Herbert 

 Spencer, whose optimistic eyes, discerning good ever in 

 things evil, sees future possible civilizations in the 

 pressure of redundant population, is also at variance 

 with the doctrine of our contemporary pessimist philo- 

 sopher, Hartmann, who, while, to the optimist, he plays 

 the part of Ahriman to Ormuz, at the same time discerns 

 in the instinct in question the deepest, most obstinate, 

 and most universal, albeit irrational, instinct of nature, 

 the all-powerful will of the species to live. 



