PROLEGOMENA 73 



age, and behold, nowise darkly, the presentment of our- 

 selves. 



During these three centuries, from the reign of Eliza- 

 beth to that of Victoria, the struggle for existence be- 

 tween man and man has been so largely restrained 

 among the great mass of the population (except for one 

 or two short intervals of civil war), that it can have had 

 little, or no, selective operation. As to anything com- 

 parable to direct selection, it has been practised on so 

 small a scale that it may also be neglected. The criminal 

 law, in so far as by putting to death or by subjecting to 

 long periods of imprisonment, those who infringe its 

 provisions, prevents the propagation of hereditary crim- 

 inal tendencies; and the poor-law, in so far as it sepa- 

 rates married couples whose destitution arises from 

 hereditary defects of character, are doubtless selective 

 agents operating in favour of the non-criminal and the 

 more effective members of society. But. the proportion 

 of the population which they influence is very small ; and, 

 generally, the hereditary criminal and the hereditary 

 pauper have propagated their kind before the law affects 

 them. In a large proportion of cases, crime and pauper- 

 ism have nothing to do with heredity; but are the con- 

 sequence, partly, of circumstances and, partly, of the 

 possession of qualities, which, under different conditions 

 of life, might have excited esteem and even admiration. 

 It was a shrewd man of the world who, in discussing 

 sewage problems, remarked that dirt is riches in the 

 wrong place; and that sound aphorism has moral appli- 

 cations. The benevolence and open-handed generosity 

 which adorn a rich man, may make a pauper of a poor 

 one; the energy and courage to which the successful sol- 

 dier owes his rise, the cool and daring subtlety to which 

 the great financier owes his fortune, may very easily, 

 under unfavourable conditions, lead their possessors 



