We will take these two points in order. With regard to the survival of the fittest in the competitive struggle for existence, the great fact which it is necessary to make clear is as follows; and it is one which our contemporary sociologists have altogether failed to perceive. In the evolution of societies, just as in the evolution of species—in the evolution of man as a social being, as in the evolution of man as an animal—the struggle for existence has played an important part; but in social evolution the part played by it is very far from being that which is popularly supposed, nor does the survival of the fittest in any way correspond with the position and influence claimed for the great man. Certain of the phenomena of progress are no doubt produced by it, but they are as different from those which the great or exceptional man produces, as is the movement of the earth round the sun from its movement round its own axis. In order to understand this, let us first consider carefully how progress, as the result of the struggle for existence, is explained by our contemporary sociologists. The matter is put succinctly and very clearly in the following passage from Mr. Kidd’s _Social Evolution_. “_Progress everywhere_,” he says, “_from the {91} beginning of life, has been effected in the same way, and is possible in no other way. It is the result of selection and rejection. In the human species, as in every other species which has ever existed, no two individuals of a generation are alike in all respects; there is infinite variation within certain narrow limits. Some are slightly above the average in a particular direction, as others are slightly below it; and it is only when the conditions prevail that are favourable to the preponderating reproduction of the former, that advance in any direction becomes possible. To formulate this as the immutable law of progress since the beginning of life has been one of the principal results of the biological science of the nineteenth century. . . . To put it in words used by Professor Flower in speaking of human society, ‘Progress has been due to the opportunity of those individuals who are a little superior in some respects to their fellows of asserting their superiority, and of continuing to live, and of promulgating as an inheritance that superiority’_.”