43 



It is evident that the degeneracy produced 

 by social conditions, and notably by the 

 present economic organisation, will still only 

 contribute, and always increasingly, to the 

 survival of those best adapted to this econo- 

 mic organisation itself. 



If the conquerors in the struggle for exist- 

 ence are the worst and the most feeble, that 

 does not mean that the Darwinian law does 

 not apply ; it simply means that the society 

 is vitiated and that those who survive are 

 precisely those who are best adapted for this 

 vitiated society. 



In my studies in criminal psychology I have 

 too often been obliged to state that in prisons 

 and in the criminal world it is the fiercest or 

 the most cunning criminals who enjoy a 

 triumph ; it is the same in our modern 

 economic individualism ; the victory belongs 

 to him who has fewest scruples, the struggle for 

 existence favours him who is the best adapted 

 to a world where a man is valued for what he 

 has (in whatever way he may have obtained 

 it) and not for what he is. 



The Darwinian law of natural selection 

 works then even in human society. The error 

 of those who deny this proposition arises 

 because they confuse the present society and 

 time which bears in history the name of 

 bourgeois, as the middle ages were called 

 feudal with the whole history of humanity ; 

 and in consequence they db not see that the 

 disastrous effects of retrogressive modern 

 social selection are only a confirmation of the 

 survival of the best adapted. Popular obser- 



