100 The Morality of Nature 



a right selection of conduct, and thus is continually lessen- 

 ing the need of correction by death. And simultaneously the 

 reasoning power is so increasing the knowledge of environ- 

 ment and the power to organize in specialized co-operation 

 against it, that the ability to cope with the hostility comes 

 not only to a few, surviving out of a number, but it belongs 

 to all, even to the weakest, and by altruistic perception is 

 extending even to the visibly deficient. It becomes clear that 

 unity of purpose with qualified strength is for humanity more 

 important than greater strength without unity. And man, 

 with increasing perception, becomes aware of the racial unity 

 and sees that for him, as for all life, the injustice of death as 

 one of the hostilities of nature appears to operate against the 

 individual only. Death is not only just but is beneficial in 

 regard to the race. When a conduct unit of several indi- 

 viduals such as a family or race is considered there occurs 

 no such injustice. From this we must infer, that it is for 

 such a unit that nature's process operates, and we must be- 

 lieve that our view of the prime importance of the individual 

 is wrong. There are many other evidences that such is 

 indeed the case. 



On the other hand it may be argued that the effect of 

 humanity and of human reason is to gradually acquire for 

 the individual that degree of justice which at first belongs 

 only to the race. The visible result of that progress, in 

 which reason overcomes environment, is to extend immunity 

 to the weak, and to save them by the strength of the strong, 

 and instead of exterminating them for weakness, to produce 

 the desired variation and progress by selective conduct in 

 foresight. This is a recognition of a cumulative principle 



