WAR AND THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 489
happen to be better fitted to their environment than others^ because of Bome favorable variation^ possess on that account an advantage which enables them to live and reproduce their kind while those not so favored are eliminated; this favorable variation reappears in the progeny of those that survive, by virtue of the tendency of like to produce like, and thus each succeeding generation becomes more closely adapted to the special circumstances of its life, and there is a gradual change of the species in the direction of better and better adaptation to these cir- cumstances.
Assuming, then, the primordial existence of organisms with a tend- ency to vary, we have in "natural selection or "the survival of the fittest an explanation of how all living creatures (and the explanation holds for societies as well) have come to be what they are, in so far, at least, as their development has not been directly and consciously affected by human effort. It is not the entire explanation, to be sure. Darwin himself did not regard it as such. " I am convinced,'* he said, " that natural selection has been the most important, but not the exclusive, means of modification.'^^ But, so far as it goes, it may be accepted as a true account of how evolution has taken place. "Natural selection or "the survival of the fittest" is a law of nature.
Now what is the significance of this law of nature with respect to the possibility and desirability of eliminating the curse of war ? Some declare that such elimination is undesirable because, as they believe, it is by war that social progress has been achieved; and impossible, also, because war, they assert, is a manifestation of a fixed and unchanging biological and social law. And so we find in current discussions of war frequent reference to "the inviolable laws of nature," and this partic- ular biological and social law of the survival of the fittest is adduced oft- times as a bar to the promotion of peace. It is brought forward with the idea, apparently, that it gives a peculiarly scientific and conclusive aspect to all arguments against the efforts and hopes of the advocates of peace. To expect or desire the cessation of war, we are told, is to disregard the law of the survival of the fittest, and the natural means of social advancement; it is Utopian, and Utopian is, with many, merely a polite substitute for chimerical, vagarious or nonsensical. Let us see whether this law has really anything to do with the possibility of elimi- nating war.
Since the promulgation of the evolutionary philosophy the doctrine of the survival of the fittest has been most frequently proclaimed in justification of the present competitive system of industry. Compe- tition, it is said, is a law of nature, and the sole motive to human effort, though how a law may become a motive is never clearly explained.
s ' ' Origin of Species, ' ' sixth London edition, p. 5.
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