CHAP, xvi REITERATION OF DARWINISM 175 



velopment of morals out of the non-moral is due 

 to natural selection. Mr. Sutherland's views are 

 supported by much evidence as to the character of 

 contemporary savage life. But, if other reports can 

 be trusted, there are features both of the present 

 and of the past which deserve more prominence than 

 they receive with Mr. Sutherland. 



In general sociological theory Mr. Sutherland is 

 strikingly loyal to his doctrine of elimination. Hu- 

 man or moral progress is due to elimination, not by 

 means of wholesale massacre, but through the grad- 

 ual and unnoticed working of natural law. Criminals 

 as a class leave but few children ; necessarily there- 

 fore, in a generation or two, criminal stocks die out 1 

 or, shall we say, tend to die out? The vicious 

 and grossly self-indulgent produce or rear few chil- 

 dren; they also die out. Even the coarse and vio- 

 lent tend to kill each other off. "They that take 

 the sword perish with the sword." The meek in- 

 herit the earth by the simple process of "lyin' low 

 and say in' nuffin'," like Brer Fox, or like the Babes 

 in the Wood, while the ruffians dispose of one an- 

 other. All this is vastly well so far as it is true ; but 

 the violent, at any rate, have no special taste for 

 singling out their violent rivals; they are quite as 

 ready to murder, outrage, or plunder the most sym- 

 pathetic and inoffensive of their neighbours. 



Let us observe however the full force of the posi- 

 tion. This method of elimination is regarded as the 



1 What about the Jukes family ? And again, if a criminal popula- 

 tion is generated afresh by society at each stage, have we advanced by 

 the elimination of previous criminals ? 



