58 PROLEGOMENA 



tive intelligence of the settlers; and it is plain that the 

 interest of the community would be best served by in- 

 creasing the proportion of persons who possess such 

 qualities, and diminishing that of persons devoid of 

 them. In other words, by selection directed towards an 

 ideal. 



Thus the administrator might look to the establish* 

 ment of an earthly paradise, a true garden of Eden, in 

 which all things should work together towards the well- 

 being of the gardeners: within which the cosmic process, 

 the coarse struggle for existence of the state of nature, 

 should be abolished; in which that state should be re- 

 placed by a state of art; where every plant and every 

 lower animal should be adapted to human wants, and 

 would perish if human supervision and protection were 

 withdrawn; where men themselves should have been se- 

 lected, with a view to their efficiency as organs for the 

 performance of the functions of a perfected society. 

 And this ideal polity would have been brought about, 

 not by gradually adjusting the men to the conditions 

 around them, but by creating artificial conditions for 

 them; not by allowing free play of the struggle for 

 existence, but by excluding that struggle; and by sub- 

 stituting selection directed towards the administrator's 

 ideal for the selection it exercises. 



vn. 



But the Eden would have its serpent, and a very 

 subtle beast too. Man shares with the rest of the 

 living world the mighty instinct of reproduction and 

 its consequence, the tendency to multiply with great 

 rapidity. The better the measures of the administrator 



