B4: EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. i 



by that selection, in view of an ideal of usefulness, 

 or of pleasantness, to man, of which the state of 

 nature knows nothing. 



1 have proceeded to show that a colony, set 

 down in a country in the state of nature, presents 

 close analogies with a garden; and I have indi- 

 cated the course of action which an administrator, 

 able and willing to carry out horticultural princi- 

 ples, would adopt, in order to secure the success of 

 such a newly formed polity, supposing it to be ca- 

 pable of indefinite expansion. In the contrary 

 case, I have shown that difficulties must arise; 

 that the unlimited increase of the population over 

 a limited area must, sooner or later, reintroduce 

 into the colony that struggle for the means of ex- 

 istence between the colonists, which it was the pri- 

 mary object of the administrator to exclude, inso- 

 much as it is fatal to the mutual peace which is the 

 prime condition of the union of men in society. 



I have briefly described the nature of the only 

 radical cure, known to me, for the disease which 

 would thus threaten the existence of the colony; 

 and, however regretfully, I have been obliged to 

 admit that this rigorously scientific method of 

 applying the principles of evolution to human so- 

 ciety hardly comes within the region of practical 

 politics; not for want of will on the part of a great 

 many people; but because, for one reason, there is 

 no hope that mere human beings will ever possess 

 enough intelligence to select the fittest. And I 



