e genesis of species. Nevertheless,
Nietzsche's mind is completely possessed by an ideal of Selection.
He, too, has a horror of panmixia. The naturalists' conception of "the
fittest" is joined by him to that of the "hero" of romance to furnish a
basis for his doctrine of the Superman. Let us hasten to add, moreover,
that at the very moment when support was being sought in the theory of
Selection for the various forms of the aristocratic doctrine, those same
forms were being battered down on another side by means of that very
theory. Attention was drawn to the fact that by virtue of the laws which
Darwin himself had discovered isolation leads to etiolation. There is
a risk that the privilege which withdraws the privileged elements of
Society from competition will cause them to degenerate. In fact, Jacoby
in his "Studies in Selection, in connexion with Heredity in Man",
("Etudes sur la Selection dans ses rapports avec l'heredite chez
l'homme", Paris, page 481, 1881.), concludes that "sterility, mental
debility, premature death and, finally, the extinction of the stock
were not specially and exclusively the fate of sovereign dynasties; all
privileged classes, all families in exclusively elevated positions share
the fate of reigning families, although in a minor degree and in direct
proportion to the loftiness of their social standing. From the mass of
human beings spring individuals, families, races, which tend to raise
themselves above the common level; painfully they climb the rugged
heights, attain the summits of power, of wealth, of intelligence, of
talent, and then, no sooner are they there than they topple down and
disappear in gulfs of mental and physical degeneracy." The demographical
researches of Hansen ("Die drei Bevolkerungsstufen", Munich, 1889.)
(following up and completing Dumont's) tended, indeed, to show that
urban as well as feudal aristocracies, burgher classes as well as noble
castes, were liable to become effete. Hence it might well be concluded
that the democratic movement, operating as it does to break down class
barriers, was promoting instead of impeding human selection.

So we see that, according to the point of view, very different
conclusions have been drawn from the application of the Darwinian idea
of Selection to human society. Darwin's other central idea, closely
bound up with this, that, namely, of the "struggle for existence" also
has been diversely utilised. But discussion has chiefly cent