Survival of the Fittest. 453 
sympathy, and who were always prepared to give aid to cach 
other, and to sacrifice themselves for the common weal, 
would be victorious over most other tribes. And this would 
be Natural Selection. Tribes at all times throughout the 
world have supplanted other tribes. Now, as morality is 
one element in their success, the standard of morality and 
the number of well-endowed men will thus everywhere tend 
to rise and increase. 
Very difficult it is to form any judgment why one particu- 
lar tribe and not another has been successful in the Struggle 
for Existence and has risen in the scale of civilization. Many 
savages are still in the same condition of degradation as 
when first discovered. The greatest part of mankind has 
never evinced the slightest desire that their civil institutions 
should be improved. Progress is not, as we are apt to con- 
sider, the normal rule in human society. Many concurrent 
favorable conditions, far too complex to be followed out, 
seem to determine human progress. A cool climate, it has 
been remarked, by leading to industry and the various arts, 
has been indispensable thereto, but if the climate has been 
too severe, as in the Arctic regions, there is a check to con- 
tinual progress. Pressed by hard necessity, the Esquimaux 
have succeeded in many ingenious inventions, but they can 
never attain, for the reason already assigned, to any very 
great success. Nomadic habits, whether along the shores 
of the sea, or over wide plains, or through dense tropical 
forests, have in all cases proved detrimental. Perhaps, the 
possession of some property, a fixed abode, and the union of 
many families under a leader or chief, are indispensable requi- 
sites for civilization, as such habits almost necessitate the 
cultivation of the ground. From some such accident as the 
falling of the seeds of a fruit-tree on a heap of refuse and pro- 
ducing an unusually fine variety may probably have resulted 
the first steps in cultivation, for if the fruit were profitable 
and good for food, it would be a very dull intellect that could 
not readily perceive, especially among a people that had 
