4C0 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



entity derived from Nature, and appertaining to every man for 

 the sole reason that he belongs to the species of " Homosapiens " ; 

 on the other hand, it identifies Right with Might, and grants to 

 the stronger, on account of their strength, the right to trample 

 on the weak. On the one hand, it declares that the hberty of 

 each is limited by the duty of doing no injury to others ; on the 

 other hand, it postulates the struggle for existence in all its 

 rigour ; it expresses the wish that the stronger shall emerge 

 victorious, although they can do so only at the expense of the 

 weaker whom they have crushed. 



And in practice how has Liberalism fared ? Is it not obvious 

 that the examination of certain symptoms of social pathology 

 which we have made, by showing us how deplorable a wastage 

 of social energy is going on and ever augmenting, constitutes in 

 itself alone a severe condemnation of the social regime under 

 which such waste of social strength and such unequivocal proofs 

 of organic deterioration are possible ? Is it not equally obvious 

 that the social regime of to-day is not based on the theory of the 

 Rechtsstaat ? And is it not evident that Liberal pohty, far from 

 keeping the promises made in its name by Adam Smith, by 

 Ricardo, by Mill, by Bastiat, by Spencer, has resulted in the most 

 unrestricted of competitions, in which the economically weaker — 

 who are not invariably or necessarily the organically inferior — 

 go to the wall ? And, instead of " the stock of society being 

 divided as nearly as possible in the proportion which is most 

 agreeable in the interest of the whole society," or " the pursuit of 

 individual advantage being admirably connected with the uni- 

 versal good of the whole," do we not find, at one end of the social 

 scale, unUmited wealth, and at the other unlimited misery ? 

 What has become of Mill's injunction to " restrict one's Hberty 

 by doing no harm to others " % Or of Kant's injunctions to treat 

 every man as an end in himself, not as a means to an end ? Or 

 of Spencer's social altruism, in which he found the counterpart to 



