The Fertility of the Unfit | Page 4

in three short weeks.
Biology is the science that observes all this, and enunciates the law that
the life history of this animal cell, _i.e._, its history from a simple
unicellular state in the egg, to its complex multicellular state in the
matured chick, represents the history of the race to which the chick
belongs. If we could trace that chicken back through all its ancestry, we
would discover at different periods in the history of life upon the globe
(about 100 million years, according to Haeckel) exactly the stages of
development we found in the life history of the chick, and arrive at last
at a primordial cell.
What is true of the chick is true of all life. This is the law of evolution.
It is true of all plant and animal life; it is true of man as an individual; it
is true of his mind as well as of his body; it is true of society as an
aggregation of individuals. As men have evolved from a lower to a
higher, a simple to a complex state, so they are still evolving and rising
"on stepping stones of their dead selves to higher things."
Natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, is one of the processes

by which evolution takes place. According to this law, only the fittest
survive in the struggle for life. Darwin was led to this discovery on
reading Malthus's thesis regarding the disproportion between the rates
of increase in population and food, and the consequent struggle for
existence.
All living organisms require food and space. The power of
multiplication in plants and animals is so great that food or space is
sooner or later entrenched upon, and then commences this inevitable
struggle for existence. In this struggle for life, the individuals best able
to conform to their environment, _i.e._, the best able to resist adverse
circumstances, to sustain hardships, to overcome difficulties, to defend
themselves, to outstrip their fellows, in short, to harmonise function
with environment, survive. These propagate their kind according to the
law of heredity. Variations exist in the progeny, and the individuals
whose variations best adapt them to their environment are the fittest to,
and do, survive.
In a state of nature the weaklings perish. If man interferes with this
state of nature in the lower animals, he may make a selection and
cultivate some particular attribute. This is artificial selection, and is
best exemplified in the experiments with pigeons. Pasteur saved the
silk industry of France, and perhaps of the whole world, by the
application of this law of artificial selection. The disease of silkworms,
known as Pebrine, was spreading with ruinous rapidity in France.
Pasteur demonstrated that the germ of the disease could be detected in
the blood of affected moths by the aid of the microscope. He proved
that the eggs of diseased moths produced unhealthy worms, and he
advised that the eggs of each moth be kept apart, until the moth was
examined for germs. If these were found, the eggs were to be burned.
Thus the eggs of unhealthy moths were never hatched, and artificial
selection of healthy stock stamped out a disease, and saved a great
industry.
Each individual plant in the struggle for life has only itself to maintain.
In the higher forms of animal life, each animal has its offspring as well
as itself to maintain. In a state of nature, that is in a state unaffected by

man's rational interference, defective offspring and weaker brethren
were the victims of the inexorable law of natural selection. When
Christ gave his reply to the question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" the
defective and the weakling became the special care of their stronger
brother. They constituted thenceforth The Fit Man's Burden. The work
a man has to do during life, in order to support himself, is the unit of
measurement of the burden he has to bear. Many factors in modern
times have helped to reduce that work to a minimum. The invention of
machinery has multiplied his eyes, his hands, his feet; and one man can
now produce, for his own maintenance and comfort, what it took
perhaps a score of men to produce even a century ago. Man's
disabilities from incidental and epidemic disease have been
immeasurably reduced by modern sanitation, and the teaching and
practice of preventive medicine. Agricultural chemistry has made the
soil more productive, and manufacturing arts have aided distribution as
well as production.
All the departments of human knowledge have been placed under
contribution to man's necessity, and longer life, better health, and more
food and clothing for less work, are the blessings on his head to-day.
While the burden has been lessened by the industrial and scientific
progress of the last half century, it has been augmented