Natural Selection. 1 3 3 



worse. For, to illustrate lower things by higher, it 

 is thus that an inferior race of men can survive in 

 an African marsh, where the flower of Europe 

 would die; and, in fact, the degenerate races of 

 Africa do survive as the fittest where they are, be- 

 cause, in the struggle of centuries, endeavoring to 

 escape the evils of tyranny and slavery, they have 

 fled into the midst of poisonous miasmas; and, de- 

 generating to a degree of conformity with the worst 

 conditions of life, they have grown acclimatized 

 there and survive. This just illustrates what Mr. 

 Wallace notes of Darwin's theory, that the minute 

 variations contemplated in it are really of any kind, 

 and in any direction. And the survival of the fit- 

 test means simply the course of nature, whereby 

 those survive who are fit to survive, or it may be, 

 are the fittest, but are not necessarily the best. 

 Therefore the theory has nothing to do with the 

 upward development even of races; much less of 

 species. 



145. Now, if the struggle for existence comes to 

 designate only the economy of nature in the or- 

 ganic kingdoms, and similarly the sur- 

 vival of the fittest denotes the course of selection 

 nature, what remains to be covered by the 

 final term, " natural selection/' which is meant to con- 

 vey all the rest ? Just so, it conveys all the rest; and 

 that, as we see, is little enough. The rest tells us 

 little that is new. Besides, we have seen that this 

 complex term is logically a misnomer (No. 106), as 



