BACIAL DETERIORATION 351 



the European races to-day are not as pessimistic as they are fre- 

 quently said to be.^ The result of the military system prevalent 

 to-day, favouring, as it does, the biologically unfit at the expense 

 of the biologically fit, is a grave obstacle to race progress. The 

 multiplication of the poorest classes of the population at the 

 expense of the higher classes, a multiplication which might be 

 deduced a 'priori from the earlier marriage in general of the 

 members composing the labouring classes, and which is proved 

 a fosteriori by statistics relating to the number of births pro- 

 portionate to each class — this multiplication cannot be regarded 

 without grave misgiving. And the general tendency of social 

 evolution to-day, in its excessive humanitarianism, is towards 

 the mitigation of relatively little actual suffering at the expense 

 of much greater suffering in the future. We are not, however, 

 to be taken as denying the amount of misery prevalent in the 

 world to-day. Mr. W. S. Lilly, who is assuredly not given to 

 exaggeration, tells us that those who look around them in Eng- 

 land to-day " see agriculture ruined, the country depopulated, 

 the towns overcrowded by Ul- housed, ill -fed, and grossly 

 sweated millions ; they see everywhere the plague of pauperism 

 side by side with the even worse plague of senseless luxury and 

 unbridled extravagance." ^ This is one side of our much-vaunted 

 progress, the economic side. And, if we look at the biological 

 side, we do not think that anyone will be so rash as to assert that 

 the race, as a whole, is faring better. The systematic protec- 

 tion of the weak and diseased, loith permission to reproduce, has 

 its counterpart, in those States where compulsory military ser- 

 vice prevails, in the systematic elimination of the fit, or in the 



1 Professor Marshall, after discussing the conditions necessary for en- 

 suring the health and strength of the population, conies to an unexpectedly 

 optimistic conclusion as regards the conditions prevalent to-day in Great 

 Britain {Principles of Economics, p. 283). We may compare these conclu- 

 sions with those which Professor Haycraft reaches in Darwinism and Race 

 Progress. 



2 The Times, January 25, 1906. 



