CHAP, xvii METAPHYSICS OF NATURAL SELECTION 2 19 



every probability that the Jews were already one of 

 the toughest of human stocks when they entered 

 that furnace. They emerged hardened still further ; 

 ordinary human races might have succumbed. If 

 we fell back on "natural selection," not sanitation, 

 to make our people healthy, we might succumb ! 



It is not to be denied that pestilence is relatively 

 advantageous. If the world must go on under con- 

 ditions of filth, it is better for the race that the 

 resulting diseases should blaze up in intermittent 

 epidemics, carrying off the weakest, than that they 

 should linger on as a chronic leaven of weakness and 

 pain, tainting the whole race. But it rests upon us 

 to find a better system than the serviceable pesti- 

 lence. I say again in all seriousness, if we selfishly 

 fell back upon laissez faire, natural selection might 

 eliminate us all. Civilisation may well have softened 

 our fibre in some respects ; and homo sapiens has no 

 title-deeds to life guaranteeing him its continuance. 

 Of all conceptions of the end of the (human) world, 

 none perhaps could be more ghastly than the vision 

 of a race dwindling away, from vice, from self- 

 indulgence, from inherited disease a race that 

 could not rise to the responsibilities of reason and 

 conscience, but called " sauve qui peut " when danger 

 came, with the result that from the ensuing stam- 

 pede none escaped without fatal injuries. If we fall 

 too low, wise nature will simply stamp out all of us. 



And yet we have in pestilence, while it lasts, an 

 accessory selecting agency (Natural Selection C), 

 with the drawback noted, that the monster leaves the 

 mark of his talons upon many who escape with their 

 lives. 



