had they been attacked. But we also remove one of the causes which
weakened the constitutions of many of the survivors. I do not know by
what right we can say that such legislation, or again, the legislation
which prevents the excessive labour of children, does more harm by
preserving the weak than it does good by preventing the weakening of
the strong. One thing is at any rate clear: to preserve life is to
increase the population, and therefore to increase the competition; or,
in other words, to intensify the struggle for existence. The process is
as broad as it is long. If we could be sure that every child born
should grow up to maturity, the result would be to double the severity
of the competition for support, What we should have to show, therefore,
in order to justify the inference of a deterioration due to this
process, would be, not that it simply increased the number of the
candidates for living, but that it gave to the feebler candidates a
differential advantage; that they are now more fitted than they were
before for ousting their superior neighbours from the chances of
support. But I can see no reason for supposing such a consequence to be
probable or even possible. The struggle for existence, as I have
suggested, rests upon the unalterable facts that the world is limited
and population elastic. Under all conceivable circumstances we shall
still have in some way or other to proportion our numbers to our
supplies; and under all circumstances those who are fittest by reason
of intellectual or moral or physical qualities will have the best
chance of occupying good places, and leaving descendants to supply the
next generation. It is surely not less true that in the civilised as
much as in the most barbarous race, the healthiest are the most likely
to live, and the most likely to be ancestors. If so, the struggle will
still be carried on upon the same principles, though certainly in a
different shape.

It is true that this suggests one of the most difficult questions of
the time. It is suggested, for example, that in some respects the
"highest" specimens of the race are not the healthiest or the fittest.
Genius, according to some people, is a variety of disease, and
intellectual power is won by a diminution of reproductive power. A
lower race, again, if we measure "high" and "low" by intellectual
capacity, may oust a higher race, because it can support itself more
cheaply, or, in other words, because it is more