Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/391

Rh endowed with it to maintain himself? The principle of natural selection is not contradicted by any fact in the history of mankind. The determination of what of its members shall survive is an affair of the particular constitution of a society. There are, as Everett has remarked, different kinds and degrees of immorality which are always important to the result. A certain degree of honor, according to the proverb, is required for a man to preserve his social standing in a society of thieves. But, besides the avoidance of flagrant violations of the social contract, there is nothing which is universally and always debarred by the demands of the social environment. The man who was fitted to succeed in the early days of the Roman Republic would have failed in the later age of the empire; and one whom the social elements of the empire lifted up would have fared badly in the time of the republic. Indeed, societies in which the highest and noblest moral attributes are a passport to success are very rare. The "fittest" in the moral sense, and the "fittest" in the sense of Darwinism, are not often the same.

And is this the last word that is to be said for Darwinism in its relation to morals? Is the judgment that the moral best and the fittest in the Darwinian sense are often not the same, of unconditioned effect? We believe not.

The principle of natural selection regulates not only the life of individuals; it rules also over the lives of generations and of peoples. It may, indeed, happen to be the means of success in some one commonwealth to practice the religion of £ s. d. It may be that in a particular society selfishness, cunning, trickery, overbearing violence or fawning subserviency, and moral cowardice, or high living and ostentation, will give good chances for getting on; men of such characters may have, in some states, the best opportunity to raise themselves and their families, while one who despises injustice, lying, and hypocrisy, will have to go to the wall. But there is, nevertheless, as Matthew Arnold says, "an eternal power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness." Characteristics, it is true, are transmitted; but not in the same combinations as they existed in the father or the mother; immoral characteristics, like those we have named, never in that which is adapted to insure success in a certain constitution of society. If we allow, by transmission or by training, some other peculiar quality to enter into the composition of the character, or if we let a certain quality be lost, then that "lucky balance" that brought success will be destroyed. The chances that the posterity of men possessing such traits of character as we have sketched will maintain themselves long, that they will not, sooner or later, fail, in consequence of collisions with the "physical, legal, or social sanction," with the laws of health or of the state, or with the demands of society, are not very great.

But "the eternal power, not ourselves, that makes for