14 On Anthropological Forecasts . [January, 
decision in favour of the higher code. And this, indeed, he 
might very reasonably do, if he could first prove that the 
future environment must of necessity be such that those 
persons whose innate disposition most readily led them to 
accept and to follow its excellent precepts would multiply 
more rapidly than the baser sort of men, prone to reject 
them in favour of those maxims of the lower code which, by 
natural bias, they prefer and adopt as their guide in life. 
But should the conditions of human existence become such 
that the lovers of B code multiply faster than the lovers of 
code A, how then ? 
Why have not the noblest ethics, which have been pro- 
claimed in the world for thousands of years, become practi- 
cally operative in the lands in which they have been taught ? 
Is it not because those better men, to whose hearts they 
were most acceptable, have not in the struggle for existence, 
and in the art of rearing descendants to inherit their quali- 
ties, been blessed with a corresponding advantage over the 
more ignoble beings, who by natural disposition were indif- 
ferent to, or positively opposed to, them ? 
Even if it could be shown that humanity is making an 
ethical advance in the midst of its present surroundings, a 
very reasonable apprehension must occur to thoughtful 
minds, that the conditions of life affecting morality may be 
very terribly changed on the arrival of that — by no means 
very distant — time when the rapid increase of our species, 
and the concurrent exhaustion of that element of the fer- 
tility of the earth’s surface, which consists of the decayed 
animal and vegetable matter, which has been accumulated 
therein during past ages, combine in bringing about a gene- 
ral scarcity of food all the world over ; and the question 
becomes one of who shall be fed and who shall starve — a 
state of things which, once begun, seems — for anything that 
appears to the contrary — likely to last. 
That professed teleologists should expeCt an advent of 
final moral perfection in every nation under heaven is not, 
perhaps, very surprising ; but such an anticipation seems to 
be very inconsistent with pure scientific principles, the odds 
against any such result arising independently of purposive 
control being surely almost infinitely great. 
The relative rapidity of multiplication of each grade of 
intellect will also decide the question as to man’s mental 
advance. The teacher may strive to impart knowledge to 
the individual, and to strengthen his mind : but the question 
of the rise Or fall, from age to age, of the intellectual capa- 
city of the species will lie with Natural Selection. That the 
