st interesting book, that the
negro may not improbably hold his own in Africa. I cannot say I regard
this as an unmixed evil. Why should there not be parts of the world in
which races of inferior intelligence or energy should hold their own? I
am not so anxious to see the whole earth covered by an indefinite
multiplication of the cockney type. But I only quote the suggestion for
another reason. Till recent years the struggle for existence was
carried on as between Europeans and negroes by simple violence and
brutality. The slave trade and its consequences have condemned the
whole continent to barbarism. That, undoubtedly, was part of the
struggle for existence. But, if Mr. Pearson's guess should be verified,
the results have been so far futile as well as disastrous. The negro
has been degraded, and yet, after all our brutality, we cannot take his
place. Therefore, besides the enormous evils to slave-trading countries
themselves, the lowering of their moral tone, the substitution of
piracy for legitimate commerce, and the degradation of the countries
which bought the slaves, the superior race has not even been able to
suppress the inferior. But the abolition of this monstrous evil does
not involve the abolition but the humanisation of the struggle. The
white man, however merciful he becomes, may gradually extend over such
parts of the country as are suitable to him; and the black man will
hold the rest and acquire such arts and civilisation as he is capable
of appropriating. The absence of cruelty would not alter the fact that
the fittest race would extend; but it may ensure that whatever is good
in the negro may have a chance of development in his own sphere, and
that success in the struggle will be decided by more valuable
qualities.

Without venturing further into a rather speculative region, I need only
indicate the bearing of such considerations upon problems nearer home.
It is often complained that the tendency of modern civilisation is to
preserve the weakly, and therefore to lower the vitality of the race.
This seems to involve inadmissible assumptions. In the first place, the
process by which the weaker are preserved consists in suppressing
various conditions unfavourable to human life in general. Sanitary
legislation, for example, aims at destroying the causes of many of the
diseases from which our forefathers suffered. If we can suppress the
smallpox, we of course save many weakly children, who would have died