[1] A tribute is due to the anonymous pioneer of sane and provident philanthropy who lately gave £20,000 to the London Hospital for research. Such a thing is a commonplace in New York, it is unprecedented in London. [2] The word is used in the ordinary loose sense, to which there is no objection provided that there be no misunderstanding of its exact scientific meaning, as in Spencer's phrase “survival of the fittest”--_i.e._ not the best, but the best adapted. See p. 43. [3] “Degeneration,” I think, is the best word for the racial, “deterioration” for the individual, change. [4] That is in the ordinary sense of the words, not in the more exact sense--as I think--in which a good environment would be defined as that which selects the good for parenthood. [5] Italics mine. [6] We have seen that Huxley's assertion of the fundamental opposition between moral and cosmic evolution is unwarrantable. We do recognise, however, that in our present practice this opposition exists. Our ancestors were cruel to the insane, but at least they prevented them from multiplying. We are blindly kind to them, and therefore in the long run cruel. But the dilemma, kind to be cruel, or cruel to be kind, is not necessary. It is quite possible, as we have asserted, to be at once kind to the individual and protective of the future. On the other hand, it is also possible to be cruel to both. The London County Council offers us, at the time of writing, a demonstration of this. Sending wretched inebriates on the round of police-court, prison and street, with intermittent gestations, rather than expend a shilling a day, per individual, in decently detaining them, it serves at least the philosophic purpose of demonstrating that it is possible to combine the maximum of brutality to the individual and the present with the maximum of injury to the race and the future. [7] Reprinted in _The Kingdom of Man_ (Constable). [8] _Sociological Papers_, 1905, p. 59. [9] Whilst allowing due weight to Mr. Wells' opinion, we may also note that of Charles Darwin who, referring to his own phrase, natural selection, says, “But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate.” (_Origin of Species_, popular edition, p. 76.) [10] _Collected Essays_, vol. i. p. 493. A valuable controversy but poor sport. Thinker _versus_ politician is scarcely a match. [11] This is discussed at length in the writer's paper, “The Obstacles to Eugenics,” read before the Sociological Society, March 8, 1909. [12] Spencer introduced the non-moral word evolution in 1857, _in order to_ avoid the moral connotation of the word progress, which he had formerly employed.