The Kingdom of ManLankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
History
The Kingdom of Man
Lankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
African trypanosomiasis; Human beings; Science -- History
A more objectionable misinterpretation of the naturalists’ doctrine
of the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence is that
made by journalists and literary politicians, who declare, according
to their political bias, either that science rightly teaches that
the gross quality measured by wealth and strength alone can survive
and should therefore alone be cultivated, or that science (and
especially Darwinism) has done serious injury to the progress of
mankind by authorizing this teaching. Both are wrong, and owe their
error to self-satisfied flippancy and traditional ignorance in
regard to nature-knowledge and the teaching of Darwin. The ‘fittest’
does not mean the ‘strongest.’ The causes of survival under Natural
Selection are very far indeed from being rightly described as mere
strength, nor are they baldly similar to the power of accumulating
wealth. Frequently in Nature the more obscure and feeble survive
in the struggle because of their modesty and suitability to given
conditions, whilst the rich are sent empty away and the mighty perish
by hunger.
[6] A short discussion of this subject and the introduction of the
term ‘educability’ was published in a paper by me entitled ‘The
Significance of the Increased Size of the Cerebrum in recent as
compared with extinct Mammalia,’ Cinquantenaire de la Société de
Biologie, Paris, 1899, pp. 48-51.
It has been pointed out to me by my friend Dr. Andrews, of the
Geological Department of the British Museum, that the brain cavity
of the elephants was already of relatively large size in the Eocene
members of that group, which may be connected with the persistence of
these animals through subsequent geological periods.
[7] It would be an error to maintain that the process of Natural
Selection is entirely in abeyance in regard to Man. In an interesting
book, _The Present Evolution of Man_, Dr. Archdall Reid has shown
that in regard to zymotic diseases, and also in regard to the use of
dangerous drugs such as alcohol and opium, there is first of all the
acquirement of immunity by powerful races of men through the survival
among them of those strains tolerant of the disease or of the drug,
and secondly, the introduction of those diseases and drugs by the
powerful immune race, in its migrations, to races not previously
exposed either to the diseases or the drugs, and a consequent
destruction of the invaded race. The survival of the fittest is, in
these cases, a survival of the tolerant and eventually of the immune.
[8] ‘Religion means the knowledge of our destiny and of the means
of fulfilling it.’--_Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton sometime
Bishop of London_, vol. ii. p. 195.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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