(following up and completing Dumont's) tended, indeed, to
show that urban as well as feudal aristocracies, burgher classes as
well as noble castes, were liable to become effete. Hence it might
well be concluded that the democratic movement, operating as it does
to break down class barriers, was promoting instead of impeding human
selection.

* * * * *

So we see that, according to the point of view, very different
conclusions have been drawn from the application of the Darwinian idea
of Selection to human society. Darwin's other central idea, closely
bound up with this, that, namely, of the "struggle for existence" also
has been diversely utilised. But discussion has chiefly centered upon
its signification. And while some endeavour to extend its application
to everything, we find others trying to limit its range. The
conception of a "struggle for existence" has in the present day been
taken up into the social sciences from natural science, and adopted.
But originally it descended from social science to natural. Darwin's
law is, as he himself said, only Malthus' law generalised and extended
to the animal world: a growing disproportion between the supply of
food and the number of the living is the fatal order whence arises the
necessity of universal struggle, a struggle which, to the great
advantage of the species, allows only the best equipped individuals to
survive. Nature is regarded by Huxley as an immense arena where all
living beings are gladiators.[254]

Such a generalisation was well adapted to feed the stream of
pessimistic thought; and it furnished to the apologists of war, in
particular, new arguments, weighted with all the authority which in
these days attaches to scientific deliverances. If people no longer
say, as Bonald did, and Moltke after him, that war is a providential
fact, they yet lay stress on the point that it is a natural fact. To
the peace party Dragomirov's objection is urged that its attempts are
contrary to the fundamental laws of nature, and that no sea wall can
hold against breakers that come with such gathered force.

But in yet another quarter Darwinism was represented as opposed to
philanthropic intervention. The defenders of the orthodox political
economy found in it support for their tenets. Since in the organic
world universal struggle is the condition of progress, it seemed
obvious that free competition must be allowed to reign unchecked in
the econ