THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN 27 



the brown " at distances of a mile or more do 

 not discriminate between the weak and the strong, 

 as did the hatchet and the club. 



Social evolution and moral evolution, about 

 which so much has been written of late, are myths 

 from the biological point of view. They have not 

 arisen through the survival of the fittest. Men 

 adhere to a particular state of society or morals, not 

 through nature, but through education. The child 

 of a Quaker, when reared by savages, is an utter 

 savage, and vice versa. That which can be acquired 

 or lost in a single generation is not a part of 

 evolution. The savage differs from the civilised 

 man merely in education ; he is provided with a 

 different set of mental acquirements, that is all.'^ 



It seems, then, that evolution along the ancient 

 lines has ceased. The race is no longer necessarily 

 to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. But the 

 mill has not ceased to grind. Men still perish in 

 enormous numbers, both during and before the 

 procreating age, while yet capable of influencing 

 posterity through heredity. A great agent of 

 elimination is in operation, which is selective to a 

 degree of accuracy far higher than the agencies 

 which evolved man from the brute, or which 

 differentiated his various races. To-day, under 

 normal circumstances, civilised men perish almost 



1 See Appendix D. 



