Page:Divine Selection or The Survival of the Useful.djvu/34

 energies into action whereby they are developed and advanced, and brought by the very laws of nature more into Divine order, for he is most in Divine order who is best fitted to survive.

Survival of the fittest, in the sense in which it applies, is not only a means of development, but it is also an expression of Divine economy and mercy and the all-governing law of use. It removes the debauchee, the enemy of society, the sickly, the weak, the licentious, the habitual transgressor of any law, natural or spiritual—for these cannot propagate their kind as can the strong, the healthy, the righteous. The idle, sinful, and debauched are the first to succumb to disease. Mr. Fiske sadly misses the truth and falls into grave error in thinking that beauty and ugliness, virtue and vice are alike to the law of the survival of the fittest. For it is by this very process that the vicious are slowly but surely eliminated and the or-