struggle for existence, having succeeded in bringing forth that
consummate product of creative energy, the Human Soul, has done its work
and will presently cease. In the lower regions of organic life it must
go on, but as a determining factor in the highest work of evolution it
will disappear.

The action of natural selection upon Man has long since been essentially
diminished through the operation of social conditions. For in all grades
of civilization above the lowest, "there are so many kinds of
superiorities which severally enable men to survive, notwithstanding
accompanying inferiorities, that natural selection cannot by itself
rectify any particular unfitness." In a race of inferior animals any
maladjustment is quickly removed by natural selection, because, owing to
the universal slaughter, the highest completeness of life possible to a
given grade of organization is required for the mere maintenance of
life. But under the conditions surrounding human development it is
otherwise.[14] There is a wide interval between the highest and lowest
degrees of completeness of living that are compatible with maintenance
of life.

Hence the wicked flourish. Vice is but slowly eliminated, because
mankind has so many other qualities, beside the bad ones, which enable
it to subsist and achieve progress in spite of them, that natural
selection--which always works through death--cannot come into play. The
improvement of civilized man goes on mainly through processes of direct
adaptation. The principle in accordance with which the gloved hand of
the dandy becomes white and soft while the hand of the labouring man
grows brown and tough is the main principle at work in the improvement
of Humanity. Our intellectual faculties, our passions and prejudices,
our tastes and habits, become strengthened by use and weakened by