world, by supposing with Malthus in all living things a tendency to rapid multiplication, leading necessarily to a struggle for existence, and (second) by supposing that in each living thing produced by this power of propagation there is some slight difference from its fellows, such variations giving an advantage in the struggle to some over others, the result being a "natural selection,” “a survival of the fittest."1 Malthus had seen that there must be a struggle for room and food. Darwin showed that in all plants and animals, and in man in his early stage, the victory in the struggle must go to those to whom nature had given some slight peculiarity that proved a help to them and was wanting to their rivals.

The result in successive generations is so great an alteration of the living creature that it seems to belong to a new species. But what we call a new species is simply the old sifted and resifted by "natural selection.' Species have been modified during a long course of descent. This has been effected chiefly through the natural selection of numerous successive, slight, favourable variations, aided in an important manner by the inherited effects of the use and disuse of parts, and in an unimportant manner (that is, in relation to adaptive structures whether past or present) by the direct action of external conditions, and by variations, which seem to us in our ignorance to arise spontaneously." " "These

6

elaborately constructed forms [the birds, plants, insects, worms of the tangled bank '] have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction, Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction, Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse, a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted

1 This statement is taken in substance from Mr. A. R. Wallace's Darwinism, pp. 10, seq.

Origin of Species, conclus., p. 421, pop. ed. The 1st ed. was published 1859. Mr. A. R. Wallace had published the same view at the same time and in complete independence of Darwin.

object which we are capable of conceiving, namely the production of the higher animals, directly follows" (Origin of Sp., chap. xv., pop. ed. 1885, p. 429).

Darwin may have conceded too much or too little to other causes than natural selection. Adhuc sub judice lis est. About the importance of natural selection itself as a main cause of the origin of species there seems to be a general agreement amongst those best qualified to judge. It is confessed on the other hand that the tendency to vary is assumed, like the tendency to multiply, simply as a given fact.1 "Selection" implies choice of what is there, but not origination of the matter of choice. We may add that selection gives us only difference, and not development as above defined. What survives at least in the lower forms of the struggle is not the same as what went before it; there is no identity or consciousness of such. There is no pretence made by Darwinians that survival means fitness in any moral sense; the morally worse men may only be the more fit to survive in the sense that they are best able to suck advantage from their surroundings; and that is all that is claimed by the theorists. It is no more than the fitness which enables the holders of the worse coins to get advantage over the holders of the finer under "Gresham's law" of the currency. The worse coinage survived because it was the fitter; it was the fitter because, being the worse and yet accepted, it was the more economical. It is not fair to describe the saying, “The fittest survive" as an analytical judgment (containing nothing in its predicate that was not contained in its subject), for "fittest" must be understood in the sense intended by the introducers of the phrase, “those having the most favourable variations," with the further conception that they are few who survive. There is a huge squandering of individuals in order that a favoured few may maintain their lives and propagate their race.

2

1 Metaphysically Leibnitz might have deduced the former from the "identity of indiscernibles"; but that principle is itself in need of proof. It might also be considered that a simple difference in time and in place would be itself a difference in environment.

2 Even this fitness is always relative to the powers of the other competitors. See Origin of Species, chap. vi. p. 163 (pop. ed.).

It might seem that Darwinism, instead of favouring equality and Communism, is essentially bound up with a hypothesis of difference; without spontaneous variations there is no scope for natural selection. But natural selection must not be judged by its harshest form, the form which it takes in the lowest circles of life, any more than the law of population. It is often the case that a generalization broadly true is stated by its first exponents as universally true. As Malthus qualified his first account of the principle of population, Darwin modified his first statements of the principle of natural selection (cautious as they were) by bringing in the agency of sexual selection; and his followers have introduced further modifications, when applying the theory to human institutions. The adaptation of population to food takes place by very different checks among savages and among civilized men. In Tierra del Fuego as in England there is an equilibrium between population and food; but there is an important difference between the ways in which the equilibrium is produced in the two cases. So natural selection (they say) works by very different means in the lower and in the higher circles of life. Moreover, if the struggle for existence is transferred from individuals to solid groups of men,' the individuals within the groups are lifted out of the struggle in the sense in which the parts of an organic body are dispensed from struggling with each other, though not from aiding or hindering the whole body in its struggle with other bodies. In the same way inheritance in the groups or transmission through successive periods of time in them means more than in the individuals. It is doubted by most biologists if acquired as distinguished from spontaneous variations can be transmitted by inheritance from individual to individual; but ideas at least, existing as they do in the social environment and common consciousness, whether in clear consciousness or as habits, may be preserved from age to age. The

1 For the formation of the groups, see Bagehot, Physics and Politics. * But see a curious passage in Roux quoted by Wallace in Darwinism, p. 416 note. Roux thinks that a "struggle of the parts in the organism" may sometimes account for the disappearance of organs.

spiritual environment is preserved by the individuals as a group, and it outlasts the individuals. In the "natural selection" of moral ideals there is not within the group any necessity that the vanquished in the struggle be slain or let die, but simply that they be converted.

When Darwinism is thus stated, it becomes a theory of development very closely akin to the philosophical, for it really involves the conservation of the past and instead of the preservation of mere life the object of the struggle is the attainment, deliberately conceived, of a better life. By adopting this view, however, we are not brought directly nearer to the adoption of any Socialistic ideal. The most direct analogy of which socialists could avail themselves would be the experimental or tentative character of any development taking place on purely "Darwinian" principles, that is (we are to understand) on the principles of Darwinism as exhibited in the lower forms of life. It might be argued that socialistic government ought to be tried like any other, and if it proves the stronger its victory will be enough for its justification,— and further, that on Darwinian principles, whether we wish it or not, this is precisely what must happen: the experiment must be tried, and the fitness of that form of government will appear in its survival.

But the

theoretical arguments for socialism would then rest on general grounds; and indeed it seems clear from the want of unanimity among Darwinians in matters of Sociology and Politics that the principles of the Master are perfectly neutral on such questions. This is precisely what we should expect. Natural selection explains how but not why certain occurrences have taken place. It leaves the subject-matter of all our problems unaffected. If we take up the three leading classes of

1 Mr. S. Alexander has brought out this point very fully. Moral Order and Progress, p. 354 seq. The drift of Prof. Pulszky's Theory of Law and Civil Society, 1889, seems to be similar, pp. 58 seq. (in relation to the conflict of what he calls "societies" within the State). Compare also Mr. J. H. Muirhead, Elements of Ethics (1892), pp. 226 seq.

2 To realize the extent of these divergencies, see Prof. O. Schmidt, "Darwinismus und Socialdemokratie" (Deutsche Rundschau, v. 2), and Mr. D. G. Ritchie, Darwinism and Politics, pp. 1-11. Cf. papers in Neue Zeit (1890).

economical questions in the order we have previously chosen-as relating (1) to the notion of Wealth, (2) to Production and Distribution, and (3) to Society and the State, we shall perhaps find further reasons for this conclusion.

(1) The notion of wealth, comfort, and standard of living must include all the various elements of man's nature, physical and spiritual. This necessity is now recognised largely by means of the recorded expansion or development of human wants in the past. It could hardly have become a generally accepted axiom if history had not shown an approximate realization of it in times past among the "favoured races." In Plato it is a novelty rather than an axiom, and even to him it was a postulate for a few men, not for all. Without the notion of an expansion of wants, modern political economy would lose much of its motive power. Economy in supply of one want is practised for the sake of the supply of another; and the constancy in the volume of human desires has, as above noticed, been with more or less accuracy set down as an element of economical reckoning. But so far as it goes this feature of humanity tells most in the latest stages where the struggle for bare life becomes the endeavour after well-being in a larger sense. There is development but not necessarily Darwinism.

(2) In production and distribution, development takes the Darwinian form far more conspicuously. Almost the first form of economy in a human society, however small, is division of labour leading to separation of employments. There is an analogy here, which has been most fully worked out by Mr. Herbert Spencer, with the formation of separate organs in the living body.' Differentiation of function leads to differentiation of structure, and the unity of the body instead of being impaired is made stronger. It would seem no doubt that what in animals leads to a natural selection at the expense of the unfit leads in men rather to a distribution of tasks in which variations prove severally of co-ordinate advantage. But it is the society that adopts this division of labour, which is the unit to be considered; and natural selection may

1 See Sociology, ch. xiv. p. 335.