Page:Divine Selection or The Survival of the Useful.djvu/33

 The struggle then is even unto death, though much less general than it is severe.

Desperate as the struggle may be, there is yet a moral motive within it. Says Mr. Fiske, "Beauty and ugliness, virtue and vice are alike to it " (Survival of the Fittest). This in special cases may be an apparent truth, but as a general principle it must be denied, even as an appearance.

Survival of the fittest, so far as it is a law, saves the strongest, the hardiest, the best of both plants and animals, and in so doing it saves the best fitted for use. Herein is the moral motive, for it would not be moral if it saved the ill-fitted rather than the best-fitted in the kingdom of uses. The law operating among plants and animals has saved those that respond most fully to human uses. Operating among mankind it brings human powers, faculties, and