28 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 
of a new species. It is on account of the rela¬ 
tive value attached by some scientists to this 
theory and to natural selection that they dis¬ 
agree, and not in regard to whether or not 
evolution is a fact. 
NATURAL SELECTION IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION 
The law of natural selection, or of the sur¬ 
vival of the fittest, is not confined to plant and 
animal life. Its sway is universal. Every 
thing that is born, spawned, hatched, sprouted, 
conceived, invented, or founded is tested by this 
law, and if found inefficient, unfit, is weeded 
out, leaving the fittest, the best, the truest to 
survive. 
On the mental plane the law of the survival 
of the fittest is often restricted in its opera¬ 
tion, and the struggle unnecessarily prolonged, 
because of the intolerance of those of the older, 
dominant belief. The world lags because they 
refuse to permit the new idea to meet the old 
on equal terms before the only court having 
jurisdiction over truth and error—the court of 
Reason. 
Intolerant people—and they are legion— 
either lack faith in the power of truth to tri¬ 
umph over error, or they harbor a lurking 
doubt in their own minds in regard to the 
amount of truth embodied in the belief they so 
anxiously shield. They regard belief—their be¬ 
lief—as something to be protected at any cost. 
Freedom of opinion, intellectual honesty, truth 
itself must yield rather than their belief be 
