500 LAWS OF MULTIPLICATION. 



less to the discipline described ; they either may or may not 

 advance under it ; bat, in the nature of things, only those 

 who do advance under it eventually survive. For, neces- 

 sarily, families and races whom this increasing difficulty of 

 getting a living which excess of fertility entails, does not 

 stimulate to improvements in production — that is, to greater 

 mental activity — are on the high road to extinction ; and 

 must ultimately be supplanted by those whom the pressure 

 does so stimulate. This truth we have recently seen exem- 

 plified in Ireland. And here, indeed, without further 

 illustration, it will be seen that premature death, under all 

 its forms and from all its causes, cannot fail to work in the 

 same direction. For as those prematurely carried-off must, 

 in the average of cases, be those in whom the power of self- 

 preservation is the least, it unavoidably follows that those 

 left behind to continue the race, must be those in whom 

 the power of self-preservation is the greatest — must be the 

 select of their generation. So that, whether the dangers to 

 existence be of the kind produced by excess of fertility, or of 

 any other kind, it is clear that by the ceaseless exercise of 

 the faculties needed to contend with them, and by the death 

 of all men who fail to contend with them successfully, there 

 is ensured a constant progress towards a higher degree of 

 skill, intelligence, and self- regulation — a better co-ordina- 

 tion of actions — a more complete life.* 



* A good deal of this chapter retains its original form ; and the ahove 

 paragraph is reprinted verhatirn from the Westminster Revieio for April, 1852, 

 in which the views developed in the foregoing hundred pages were first 

 sketched out. This paragraph shows how near one may be to a great generaliza- 

 tion without seeing it. Though the process of natural selection. is recognized; 

 and though to it is ascribed a share in the evolution of a higher type ; yet the 

 conception must not be confounded with that which Mr. Darwin has worked 

 out with such wonderful skill, and supported by such vast stores of knowledge. 

 In the first place, natural selection is here described only as furthering direct 

 adaptation — only as aiding progress by the preservation of individuals in 

 whom functionally-produced modifications have gone on most favourably. In 

 the second place, there is no trace of the idea that natural selection may, by 

 to-operation with the cause assigned, or with other causes, produce divergences 



