PROLEGOMENA 71 



most loyal mutual support outside it, would be the 

 survivors. 



I have termed this gradual strengthening of the social 

 bond, which, though it arrest the struggle for existence 

 inside society, up to a certain point improves the chances 

 of society, as a corporate whole, in the cosmic struggle 

 the ethical process. I have endeavoured to show that, 

 when the ethical process has advanced so far as to secure 

 every member of the society in the possession of the 

 means of existence, the struggle for existence, as between 

 man and man, within that society is, ipso facto, at an 

 end. And, as it is undeniable that the most highly civi- 

 lized societies have substantially reached this position, it 

 follows that, so far as they are concerned, the struggle 

 for existence can play no important part within them. 24 

 In other words, the kind of evolution which is brought 

 about in the state of nature cannot take place. 



I have further shown cause for the belief that direct 

 selection, after the fashion of the horticulturist and the 

 breeder, neither has played, nor can play, any important 

 part in the evolution of society ; apart from other reasons, 

 because I do not see how such selection could be prac- 

 tised without a serious weakening, it may be the de- 

 struction, of the bonds which hold society together. It 

 strikes me that men who are accustomed to contemplate 

 the active or passive extirpation of the weak, the unfor- 

 tunate, and the superfluous; who justify that conduct on 

 the ground that it has the sanction of the cosmic process, 

 and is the only way of ensuring the progress of the race ; 

 who, if they are consistent, must rank medicine among 



24 Whether the struggle for existence with the state of nature 

 and with other societies, so far as they stand in the relation of 

 the state of nature with it, exerts a selective influence upon mod- 

 ern society, and in what direction, are questions not easy to 

 answer. The problem of the effect of military and industrial war- 

 fare upon those who wage it is very complicated. [T. H. H.] 



