PROLEGOMENA 59 



achieved their object, the more completely the destruc- 

 tive agencies of the state of nature were defeated, the 

 less would that multiplication be checked. 



On the other hand, within the colony, the enforce- 

 ment of peace, which deprives every man of the power 

 to take away the means of existence from another^ 

 simply because he is the stronger, would have put an 

 end to the struggle for existence between the colonists, 

 and the competition for the commodities of existence, 

 which would alone remain, is no check upon population. 



Thus, as soon as the colonists began to multiply, the 

 administrator would have to face the tendency to the 

 reintroduction of the cosmic struggle into his artificial 

 fabric, in consequence of the competition, not merely for 

 the commodities, but for the means of existence. When 

 the colony reached the limit of possible expansion, the 

 surplus population must be disposed of somehow; or the 

 fierce struggle for existence must recommence and de- 

 stroy that peace, which is the fundamental condition of 

 the maintenance of the state of art against the state of 

 nature. 



Supposing the administrator to be guided by purely 

 scientific considerations, he would, like the gardener, 

 meet this most serious difficulty by systematic extirpa- 

 tion, or exclusion, of the superfluous. The hopelessly 

 diseased, the infirm aged, the weak or deformed in body 

 or in mind, the excess of infants born, would be put 

 away, as the gardener pulls up defective and superfluous 

 plants, or the breeder destroys undesirable cattle. Only 

 the strong and the healthy, carefully matched, with a 

 view to the progeny best adapted to the purposes of the 

 administrator, would be permitted to perpetuate their 

 kind. 



