the unfit.

Some have thought that this struggle for existence which is so evident
in the animal world does not take place in human society. This, however,
is a mistake. The struggle for existence in human society is not an
unmitigated one, as it seems to be very often in the animal world, but
it is nevertheless a struggle which has the same consequences. In the
human world the competition, except in the lower classes, is not so much
for food, as it is for position and for supremacy. But this struggle for
place and power results in human society in the weak and inferior going
to the wall, and therefore ultimately in their elimination. In all
essential respects, then, the struggle for existence goes on in human
society as it does in the animal world. This means that in society, as
in the animal world, progress comes primarily through the elimination of
unfit individuals. The unfit in human society, as we shall see, are
especially those who cannot adapt themselves to their social
environment. Progress in society, in a certain sense, waits upon death,
as it does in all the rest of the animal world. Death is the means by
which the stream of life is purged from its inferior and unfit elements.

(5) _Another Factor in Organic Evolution is Coöperation_, or
altruism, as we have already called it. As Henry Drummond has said, this
is the struggle not for one's own life but for the lives of others.
Really, however, it is a device which enables a group of individuals to
struggle more successfully with the adverse factors in their
environment. Something of coöperation,--that is, a group of individuals
carrying on a common life,--is found almost at the beginning of life,
and, as we rise in the scale of animal creation, the amount of
coöperation and of altruistic feelings which accompany it very greatly
increases. Perhaps the chief source of this coöperation is to be found