Struggle for Existence 471 
Mamn/, concludes that “sterility, mental debility, premature death and, 
finally, the extinction of the stock were not specially and exclusively 
the fate of sovereign dynasties ; all privileged classes, all families in 
exclusively elevated positions share the fate of reigning families, 
although in a minor degree and in direct proportion to the loftiness 
of their social standing. From the mass of human beings spring 
individuals, families, races, which tend to raise themselves above the 
common level ; painfully they climb the rugged heights, attain the 
summits of power, of wealth, of intelligence, of talent, and then, no 
sooner are they there than they topple down and disappear in gulfs 
of mental and physical degeneracy.” The demographical researches 
of Hansen? (following up and completing Dumont’s) tended, indeed, 
to show that urban as well as feudal aristocracies, burgher classes 
as well as noble castes, were liable to become effete. Hence it might 
well be concluded that the democratic movement, operating as it does 
to break down class barriers, was promoting instead of impeding 
human selection. 
So we see that, according to the point of view, very different 
conclusions have been drawn from the application of the Darwinian 
idea of Selection to human society. Darwin’s other central idea, 
closely bound up with this, that, namely, of the “struggle for 
existence” also has been diversely utilised. But discussion has 
chiefly centered upon its signification. And while some endeavour 
to extend its application to everything, we find others trying to 
limit its range. The conception of a “struggle for existence” has in 
the present day been taken up into the social sciences from natural 
science, and adopted. But originally it descended from social science 
to natural. Darwin’s law is, as he himself said, only Malthus’ law 
generalised and extended to the animal world: a growing dispro- 
portion between the supply of food and the number of the living is 
the fatal order whence arises the necessity of universal struggle, a 
struggle which, to the great advantage of the species, allows only 
the best equipped individuals to.survive. Nature is regarded by 
Huxley as an immense arena where all living beings are gladiators’. 
Such a generalisation was well adapted to feed the stream of 
pessimistic thought ; and it furnished to the apologists of war, in 
particular, new arguments, weighted with all the authority which in 
these days attaches to scientific deliverances. If people no longer 
say, as Bonald did, and Moltke after him, that war is a providential 
1 Btudes sur la Sélection dans ses rapports avec Vhérédité chez Vhomme, Paris, p. 481, 
1881. 
2 Die drei Bevilkerungsstufen, Munich, 1889. 
3 Evolution and Ethics, p. 200; Collected Essays, vol. 1x, London, 1894. 
