NATURE, HISTORY, AND ETHICS 415 



been prevented from having children, there would soon 

 be no people with unsound lungs. We look too much 

 to the individual. We ought to care for the soundness 

 of the species, as nature does, and then the individuals 

 also would be sounder. 



Other institutions show us an inverted selection. 

 War brings about a " survival of the weakest," as it 

 is precisely the strongest elements that perish in them, 

 while the weaklings can continue to bring forth their 

 puny children in peace at home. It is, therefore, 

 unspeakably perverse and ridiculous to say that a little 

 blood-letting from time to time does a nation good, and 

 keeps down over-population. Apart from the fact that 

 with the vast sums spent on the army waste lands might 

 be cultivated, and numbers of families provided with 

 new and secure dwellings, this blood-letting deprives 

 the nation of its soundest blood, and every battle 

 lessens the vital force of the next generation. 



Our whole military system should be abandoned. 

 From the fact that the strongest enter military service, 

 they generally lose the time for founding a family, while 

 the less strong civilians have young earlier. Thus the 

 weaker children come earlier and are more numerous, 

 and this gradually enfeebles the race. 



Finally, we have a case of inverted selection in the 

 Catholic principle of clerical celibacy. In Catholic 

 countries the stupid survive, as a glance at such lands 

 is said to show. As a general rule in a Catholic 

 country, those are chosen for the clergy who are above 

 the average of intelligence that suffices for peasants 



