e population of savage races to
so much lower an average than that of more civilized peoples. It then
occurred to me that these causes or their equivalents are continually
acting in the case of animals also; and as animals usually breed much
more rapidly than does mankind, the destruction every year from these
causes must be enormous in order to keep down the numbers of each
species, since they evidently do not increase regularly from year to
year, as otherwise the world would long ago have been densely crowded
with those that breed most quickly. Vaguely thinking over the enormous
and constant destruction which this implied, it occurred to me to ask
the question, Why do some die and some live? And the answer was clearly,
that on the whole the best fitted live. From the effects of disease the
most healthy escaped; from enemies the strongest, the swiftest, or
the most cunning; from famine the best hunters or those with the
best digestion; and so on. Then it suddenly flashed upon me that this
self-acting process would necessarily IMPROVE THE RACE, because in every
generation the inferior would inevitably be killed off and the superior
would remain--that is, THE FITTEST WOULD SURVIVE." (Ibid. Vol. 1. page
361.) We need not apologise for this long quotation, it is a tribute
to Darwin's magnanimous colleague, the Nestor of the evolutionist
camp,--and it probably indicates the line of thought which Darwin
himself followed. It is interesting also to recall the fact that in
1852, when Herbert Spencer wrote his famous "Leader" article on "The
Development Hypothesis" in which he argued powerfully for the thesis
that the whole animate world is the result of an age-long process of
natural transformation, he wrote for "The Westminster Review" another
important essay, "A Theory of Population deduced from the General Law of
Animal Fertility", towards the close of which he came within an ace
of recognising that the struggle for existence was a factor in organic
evolution. At a time when pressure of population was practically
interesting men's minds, Darwin, Wallace, and Spencer were being
independently led from a social problem to a biological theory. There
could be no better illustration, as Prof. Patrick Geddes has pointed
out, of the Comtian thesis that science is a "social phenomenon."

Therefore, as far more important than any further ferreting out of vague
hints of Natural Selection in books which Darwin never read, we would
indic