222 DARWINISM AND HUMAN LIFE 



social selection and natural selection. In some 

 countries there are posts as foresters and police 

 wliicli are filled by picked men, often by very 

 desirable types physically, mentally, and morally. 

 Here, then, is the setting up of a standard and a 

 rejection of the unfit ; and, of course, it works in the 

 right direction. But it is easy to see that it differs 

 from what goes on in nature, and that the issues are 

 complicated. For instance, as a German writer 

 points out, the ineligible were also ineligible for 

 military service. There are no disadvantageous 

 consequences of this ; the rejected are spared time 

 and money, they can marry earlier, and so on. 



The stress of competition exercises a certain 

 selective influence, but how differently it works 

 from natural selection ! It does not necessarily 

 make for the elimination of the unsuccessful; it 

 shifts him. It may compel him into an occupation 

 where his chances of death are lessened. If he is 

 driven out of regular employment altogether, he 

 passes into ranks with a high death-rate, but even 

 then natural selection does not work, for he usually 

 has a large family in the meantime. Thus we see 

 that many processes of differential elimination in 

 human societies turn out, on close inspection, to 

 be very different from natural selection, and this 

 is our whole point at present — that these processes 

 of social selection cannot be trusted, and that 

 nothing is more absurd than to murmur " Survival 

 of the fittest " — since that is precisely what is not 

 happening either in the Darwinian sense or in any 

 other. 



Reversed Selection in Human Society. — 

 Those who are unfamiliar with the biological point 

 of view seem to find it difficult to bear in mind 



