of the gospel supplies the sole preserving and regenerating element, a
universal law of decay in human affairs. Innumerable times, and at the
most crucial moments of human history, not the fittest but the unfittest
survived. Dr. A. L. Graebner said: "The principle of the 'survival of the
fittest' is so far from accounting for the phenomena of history, that the
principle itself is flatly contradicted and utterly exploded by a sober
investigation of historical facts. That there are in nature numerous
instances of a survival of the _un_fittest, is not only conceded by our
evolutionists, but has been deliberately forged into an argument against
teleology (divine purpose) and divine providence! And, we ask, was it by
the survival of the fittest that Julius Ceasar, [tr. note: sic] one of the
grandest rulers of all ages, should succumb under the daggers of Brutus
and Cassius: that Paul and Seneca should die by authority of their
inferior, Nero; that Popery, rotten to the core and represented by men
who would have brought on the ignominous [tr. note: sic] collapse or
extinction of every other dynasty in the days of the Roman pornocracy,
should survive, while the illustrious house of Henry I. sank away to
ruin in the third and fourth generation; that John Hus should die at the
stake and Jean Charlier de Gerson in timid monastic retirement, while
Balthasar Cossa, by far their inferior in talents and learning, and
every inch an infamous scoundrel, having for a time disgraced even the
Roman see as John XXIII, ended his days as a Cardinal and Bishop of
Tusculum and Dean of the Sacred College; that Girolamo Savonarola, one
of the most remarkable and pure-minded leaders of his day and of all
times, should be fought down and crushed in a struggle with men not one
of whom was worthy of unloosing his shoe's latchet, among them Alexander
VI, one of the most scandalous wretches of all history? Survival of the
fittest!"

The article from which we have quoted points out the relevancy, to the
question at issue, of the principle of degeneration and gradual decay in
historical organisms or institutions. "Our scientists who bother
themselves and others about the descent of man have favored with a keen
interest the Bushmen of Australia and other types of savage humanity,
with receding skulls, flat noses, thin legs, little or no clothing, and
not much of morals or religion. The lower in the scale and the farther
remote from the civilized Caucasia