174 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
by a careful rooting out of weeds, light, air, and ground is 
gained for good and useful plants, in like manner, by the 
indiscriminate destruction of all incorrigible criminals, not 
only would the struggle for life among the better portion of 
mankind be made easier, but also an advantageous artificial 
process of selection would be set in practice, since the possi- 
bility of transmitting their injurious qualities by inheritance 
would be taken from those degenerate outcasts. 
Against the injurious influence of artificial military and 
medical selection, we fortunately have a salutary counter- 
poise, in the invincible and much more powerful influence 
of natural selection, which prevails everywhere. For in 
the life of man, as well as in that of animals and plants, this 
influence is the most important transforming principle, and 
the strongest lever for progress and amelioration. The 
result of the struggle for life is that, in the long run, that 
which is better, because more perfect, conquers that which 
is weaker and imperfect. In human life, however, this 
struggle for life will ever become more and more of an 
intellectual struggle, not a struggle with weapons of murder. 
The organ which, above all others, in man becomes more 
perfect by the ennobling influence of natural selection, is 
the brain. The man with the most perfect understanding, 
not the man with the best revolver, will in the long run be 
victorious; he will transmit to his descendants the qualities 
of the brain which assisted him in the victory. Thus then 
we may justly hope, in spite of all the efforts of retrograde 
forces, that the progress of mankind towards freedom, and 
thus to the utmost perfection, will, by the happy influence 
of natural selection, become more and more certain. 
