FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION 35 



must it not yet be said that there is Design in 

 Evolution ? l 



The answer to this, as we shall see in another 

 volume, is that morality is itself a factor that makes 

 for survival (union being strength), and that there- 

 fore morality finds in biological facts a natural 

 and perdurable sanction which antedates all the 

 churches by tens of millions of years. 



Then, again, it is said that natural selection is 

 a cruel law. Alfred Tennyson, the first poet to 

 recognise and to appraise the moral and philosophic 

 significance of organic evolution, speaks of Nature 

 as " red in tooth and claw " , " so careful of the type 

 she seems, so careless of the single life ; " and we 

 are often told that Nature cares nothing for the 

 individual, but only for the race — as if a race 

 were not a collection of individuals. 



But these phrases of Tennyson's cannot be 

 allowed to pass unchallenged. On the contrary, 

 it must be asserted that natural selection is a 

 benign and merciful law : contrasting, in this 

 regard, with the human laws which allow the 

 criminal, the drunkard, the insane, the tuberculous, 

 to propagate their kind. By destroying the unfit, 

 or refusing to allow them opportunity to reproduce 

 themselves, Nature increases the amount of organic 

 fitness in the world ; and no competent person 

 now disputes that Spencer has proved the relation, 

 now and in the past, between fitness and happiness. 

 Natural selection, therefore, constantly works for 

 greater happiness, and if there exist any other 



i See, for instance, the Rev. Professor George Henslow, in 

 "Modern Rationalism Critically Examined." 



