526 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL ch. xxiii 



and good men are always produced in sufficient numbers, 

 and have always been so produced in every phase of civil- 

 ization. We do not need more of these so much as we 

 need less of the weak and the bad. This weeding-out 

 system has been the method of natural selection, by which 

 the animal and vegetable worlds have been improved and 

 developed. The survival of the fittest is really the extinc- 

 tion of the unfit. In nature this occurs perpetually on an 

 enormous scale, because, owing to the rapid increase of 

 most organisms, the unfit which are yearly destroyed form 

 a large proportion of those that are born. Under our 

 hitherto imperfect civilization this wholesome process has 

 been checked as regards mankind ; but the check has been 

 the result of the development of the higher attributes of 

 our nature. Humanity — the essentially human emotion 

 — has caused us to save the lives of the weak and suffer- 

 ing, of the maimed or imperfect in mind or body. This 

 has to some extent been antagonistic to physical and even 

 intellectual race-improvement; but it has improved us 

 morally by the continuous development of the character- 

 istic and crowning grace of our human, as distinguished 

 from our animal nature. 



In the society of the future this defect will be remedied, 

 not by any diminution of our humanity, but by encourag- 

 ing the activity of a still higher human characteristic — 

 admiration of all that is beautiful and kindly and self- 

 sacrificing, repugnance to all that is selfish, base, or cruel. 

 When we allow ourselves to be guided by reason, justice, 

 and public spirit in our dealings with our fellow-men, and 

 determine to abolish poverty by recognizing the equal 

 rights of all the citizens of our common land to an equal 

 share of the wealth which all combine to produce — when 

 we have thus solved the lesser problem of a rational social 

 organization adapted to secure the equal well-being of all, 

 then we may safely leave the far greater and deeper 

 problem of the improvement of the race to the cultivated 

 minds and pure instincts of the men, and especially of the 

 Women of the Future. 



