CHAPTER XXIII 



HUMAN SELECTION 



In one of my latest conversations with Darwin he 

 expressed himself very gloomily on the future of humanity, 

 on the ground that in our modern civilization natural 

 selection had no play, and the fittest did not survive. 

 Those who succeed in the race for wealth are by no means 

 the best or the most intelligent, and it is notorious that 

 our population is more largely renewed in each generation 

 from the lower than from the middle and upper classes. 

 As a recent American writer well puts it, " We behold the 

 melancholy spectacle of the renewal of the great mass of 

 society from the lowest classes, the highest classes to a 

 great extent either not marrying or not having children. 

 The floating population is always the scum, and yet the 

 stream of life is largely renewed from this source. Such 

 a state of affairs, sufficiently dangerous in any society, is 

 simply suicidal in the democratic civilization of our day." ^ 



That the check to progress here indicated is a real one 

 few will deny, and the problem is evidently felt to be one 

 of vital importance, since it has attracted the attention of 

 some of our most thoughtful writers, and has quite recently 

 furnished the theme for a perfect flood of articles in our 

 best periodicals. I propose here to consider very briefly 

 the various suggestions made by these writers ; and after- 

 wards shall endeavour to show that when the course of 

 social evolution shall have led to a more ra.tional organiza- 

 tion of society, the problem will receive its final solution 



^ Hiram M. Stanley in the Arena for June, 1890. 



