I PROLEGOMENA. 41 



only among this twentieth of the whole people 

 that numerous men, women, and children die of 

 rapid or slow starvation, or of the diseases inci- 

 dental to permanently bad conditions of life; and 

 as there is nothing to prevent their multiplication 

 before they are killed off, while, in spite of greater 

 infant mortality, they increase faster than the 

 rich; it seems clear that the struggle for exist- 

 ence in this class can have no appreciable selec- 

 tive influence upon the other 95 per cent, of the 

 population. 



What sort of a sheep breeder would he be 

 who should content himself with picking out the 

 worst fifty out of a thousand, leaving them on 

 a barren common till the weakest starved, and 

 then letting the survivors go back to mix with the 

 rest? And the parallel is too favourable; since 

 in a large number of cases, the actual poor and 

 the convicted criminals are neither the weakest 

 nor the worst. 



In the struggle for the means of enjoyment, 

 the qualities which ensure success are energy, in- 

 dustry, intellectual capacity, tenacity of purpose, 

 and, at least, as much sympathy as is necessary 

 to make a man understand the feelings of his fel- 

 lows. Were there none of those artificial arrange- 

 ments by which fools and knaves are kept at the 

 top of society instead of sinking to their natural 

 place at the bottom,* the struggle for the means 



• I have elsewhere lamented the absence from society 



