In the struggle for the means of enjoyment, the qualities which ensure
success are energy, industry, intellectual capacity, tenacity of
purpose, and, at least as much sympathy as is necessary to make a
man understand the feelings of his fellows. Were there none of those
artificial arrangements by which fools and knaves are kept at the top
of society instead of sinking to their natural place at the bottom, the
struggle for the means of enjoyment would ensure a constant circulation
of the human units of the social compound, from the bottom to the top
and from the top to the bottom. The survivors of the contest, those
who continued to form the great bulk of the polity, would not be those
"fittest" who got to the very top, but the great body of the moderately
"fit," whose numbers and superior propagative power enable them always
to swamp the exceptionally endowed minority.
I think it must be obvious to every one that, whether we consider the
internal or the external interests of society, it is desirable they
should be in the hands of those who are endowed with the largest
share of energy, of industry, of intellectual capacity, of tenacity of
purpose, while they are not devoid of sympathetic humanity; and, in so
far as the struggle for the means of enjoyment tends to place such men
in possession of wealth and influence, it is a process which tends
to the good of society. But the process, as we have seen, has no real
resemblance to that which adapts living beings to current conditions
in the state of nature; nor any to the artificial selection of the
horticulturist.