selection that brought about the result? To test the matter let us ask
once more how natural selection operates. Its mode of operation is
always simply negative. And if, in the struggle of life, it selects
the courageous man rather than the coward, the temperate man rather
than the intemperate, the method by which this result is reached is
simple: when it comes to a conflict the courageous man kills the
coward or reduces him to subjection; the intemperate man has less
vitality than the temperate: he too disappears, although perhaps
gradually.

Take again the group-competition so far as it is influenced by
natural selection. The tribe which manifests the qualities of social
solidarity is selected simply in this way, that when it comes into
conflict with a tribe which has not this solidarity the latter
is beaten, and is thus unable to obtain the pastures or the
hunting-ground which it desires, and therefore gradually or swiftly it
is exterminated or left behind in the race for life. Now, I ask, Did
this process take place when Darwinism supplanted the traditional
theory of the fixity of species? Surely it is clear that it is only in
the rarest cases that false or inadequate ideas on such subjects have
any tendency to shorten life or weaken health. Bishop Wilberforce was
killed by a fall from his horse, not by the triumphant dialectic of
Professor Huxley. Sir Richard Owen lived to a patriarchal old age, and
did not disappear from the face of the earth because he still clung to
an idea which the best intellect of his time had relinquished. There
is nothing in the doctrine of the fixity of species--if you hold
it--which will in the least degree tend to diminish vitality. Natural
selection has practically no effect at all in exterminating those who
adhere to this idea. There is no means of livelihood from which it
would exclude them except indeed that it might prevent them from