The
Editor's
DARWINISM AND THE LAW CHARLES DARWIN, the centenary of whose birth is observed this year, was in no sense a political writer, and he did not furnish us with an application of his principle of "the survival of the fittest" to social phe nomena. It is not difficult, however, to imagine that, were he alive today, he would see in the attrition of social forces evidence of a different form of "the survival of the fittest" from that to which he devoted a life time of study, and that his great contribution would enrich other departments of science than that to which he gave chief attention. Darwinism and the doctrine of evolution are by no means synonomous. The science of evolution, or to be more accurate that of genetics, is not yet complete, and the in valuable contributions of Weismann, Mendel, de Vries, with many others, have considerably enriched and expanded it since Darwin and Wallace. The complexities of human society will provide material for an expanding science of evolution. Darwin left practically un touched the problem of human progress. Future writers will have to explain the mean ing of "the survival of the fittest" as applied to the progress of humanity. The unpopularity of Darwin's theories when they were first made public was due chiefly to theological odium, but partly also to sentimental causes and to prejudices not easily shaken off. There was a cold brutality about the idea of the destruction of the unfit which offended tender-hearted orthodox op timism. There was also, in the prerogative of those favored by nature, something re pellent to the then prevalent notion of justice. Why should the individual be rewarded for what is not of his own doing, and why should he be destroyed because he is born with weaknesses for which he is not responsible? That was the attitude of the morality of an
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earlier generation. But a truer moral perspec tive has since helped us to perceive more clearly that while the free-willed individual does not deserve to suffer for the faults of that which is determinate and no longer free neither does society deserve to suffer because of a false sentiment of charity which defies the principle of . social self-preservation, and invites the corrosion sure to follow upon tolerance of decay within threatening its very vitals. In other words, the old concep tion of justice to the individual, instead of being supplanted, has been strengthened and corrected by that notion of justice to society which though never wholly overlooked was never so clearly envisaged as now, when man has learned that the will unaided cannot rise to all things, but the heights of virtue are to be sealed only with the fortunate assistance of forces of environment and heredity which are beyond the control of those who triumph. Man is a part of nature, so that natural selection, if the term is used accurately, must mean not only the selection which nature exercises upon man, but also that which man exercises upon himself. It must mean the selection applied by the social as well as by the physical environment of man, and "the survival of the fittest" in consequence of social selection—which includes sexual selec tion—may mean one of two things: the survival either of those best adapted to their physical environment, or of those best fitted to their social surroundings. If in the lower forms of life, among ants and bees for example, we see the operation of that social selection which favors the socially fit and eliminates the socially unfit, of how tremendously greater importance must be the part which social selection must play in the life of mankind! Adaptation to the social environment, if not the substance of moral goodness, is its shadow, and as we enter the field of social science we see that the doctrine
