Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/161

 ETHICS OF THE COMPETITIVE PROCESS 147

in which each individual has, in the main, had visited upon it the natural effect of its own nature and consequent conduct. It is to be observed, however, that, in order to secure the efficiency of the evolutionary process, there has been demanded the birth of a vastly greater number of individuals than can by any pos- sibility live lives of natural length. In other words, in order to secure the requisite favorable variations, and to obtain the needed intensity of competition, many are called into life, while but few are chosen for a life sufficiently long to enable them to produce offspring. The development of the species has thus ever been at the expense of the great majority of the individuals constitut- ing it. As to this Mr. Spencer says :

The species has no existence save as an aggregate of individuals, and it is true that, therefore, the welfare of the species is an end to be sub- served only as subserving the welfares of individuals But [he contin- ues] since the disappearance of the species, implying disappearance of all individuals, involves absolute failure of achieving the end, whereas disap- pearance of individuals, though carried to a great extent, may leave outstand ing such number as can, by the continuance of the species, make subsequent fulfillment of the end possible ; the preservation of the individual must, in a variable degree, according to circumstances, be subordinated to the preserva- tion of the species, where the two conflict. 1

Coming now to human life, Mr. Spencer, finding in it no ele- ments not embraced in sub-human life, applies as necessary to human development the law stated above that upon each indi- vidual should be visited the natural results of his own nature as judged by the degree of his adaptation to the demands of his environment. This law, he declares, is one not simply of fact, but of moral (as he understands moral) obligation. It becomes, in fact, at once a law of necessity (if there would be human evolution) and a canon of distributive justice. Mr. Spencer therefore holds that any interference on the part of man with the principle, which this law declares, is not only unwise, but immoral. He holds, however, that there is an important modifi- cation, in form, if not in character, of the principle in its applica- tion to men resulting from the gradual recognition by men, due to their increasing intellectuality, that, in order to give this