Survival of the fittest

“ I would simply stimulate them to work; if they were unfit to work, they must die. I would not prevent anybody giving them food and shelter, though I would teach people that by so doing they were hindering the great law of Nature—the survival of the fittest. ”

“ The first was the great resisting power and vigor of the human organism, which we had gravely underestimated. The second, that power of adaptation to new circumstances, including even the attack of infectious diseases, which we call "survival of the fittest." The third, that great, sustaining, conservative power of nature—heredity. More cheering yet, these forces came, not merely fully armed, but bearing new weapons fitted for our hands. The vigor and unconquerable toughness of the human animal presented us with three glittering weapons, sunshine, food, and fresh air. ”

“ That the iron doctrine of the survival of the fittest should have come into action, and that even the very virtues of our boasted civilisation should lead to the deterioration and ultimate extinction of a once happy people. ”

“ This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called "natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life." ”

“ But more than this, the doctrines of Natural Selection and the Survival of the Fittest are beginning to generate a morality of their own, with the inevitable corollary that the proof of superior fitness is to survive—to survive either by force or cunning, like the other animals which by dint of force or cunning have come out victorious from the universal war and asserted for themselves a place in nature. ”

“ The law of the survival of the fittest will prevail in regard to social institutions, as it has in the past, but the conditions of fitness have undergone a change the implications of which we can but dimly foresee. ”

“ The fittest survive.
What is meant by the fittest?
Not the strongest; not the cleverest—
Weakness and stupidity everywhere survive.
There is no way of determining fitness except in that a thing does survive.
"Fitness," then, is only another name for "survival."
Darwinism:
That survivors survive. ”

“ Those who lived were indeed the survival of the fittest, and aside from a disease of the eye—brought on by the glaring sand and burning sun—they were generally healthy and equal to any hardship. Marrying young, women were often grandmothers at thirty. ”

“ If such do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. ”

“ It is said, for instance, that in a bad environment it may be precisely the defective classes who are most "fit" to survive. It is quite true that these terms are not well adapted to resist hyper-critical attack. The persistence with which they are employed seems, however, to indicate a certain "survival of the fittest." ”

“ What?—screamed humans—treat machines as equals?
Even if the "survival of the fittest" theory (grafted onto Darwinism by popularizers) is a good one, it's still a matter of hindsight, and not a case of deciding in advance which or who ought to survive. However, does this stump our hero, our indefatigable human being? The answer is a hearty, if somewhat delusionary, NO! Whether it's America, Russia, China, Lower Slobovia, it's just plain understood that "we are the most fit to survive ”

“ We do not grumble at the result, for we acknowledge and have our being in the same natural law. And now the question has arisen: UNDER THE PRESENT SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT, WHICH OF US SHALL SURVIVE? We believe we are the fittest. You believe you are the fittest. We leave the eventuality to time and law. ”

“ Is the evolution of a higher human type the same kind of a process as that of a higher animal or vegetable type? Is progress achieved only [Pg 392] through the preservation of the fit and the elimination of the unfit? If it could be shown that this is the case, then certainly the conditions under which this struggle to the death is carried on would be a matter of supreme importance. Are our social adjustments such as to facilitate, or at least not interfere with it? Do they make the question of success or failure, survival or elimination, depend upon individual fitness or unfitness? ”

“ In this struggle for life, the individuals best able to conform to their environment, i.e., the best able to resist adverse circumstances, to sustain hardships, to overcome difficulties, to defend themselves, to outstrip their fellows, in short, to harmonise function with environment, survive. These propagate their kind according to the law of heredity. Variations exist in the progeny, and the individuals whose variations best adapt them to their environment are the fittest to, and do, survive.
In a state of nature the weaklings perish. ”

“ There is no word in the language that more exactly expresses the fact than the word fittest: as Darwin recognised when he promptly incorporated Spencer's phrase in the second edition of the Origin of Species as the best interpretation of his own phrase “natural selection”! [9] Fitness is the capacity to fit: a thing that is fit is a thing that fits. A living creature survives in proportion as it fits its environment—the physical environment in the case of vegetables and the lower animals, the physical, social, intellectual and moral environment in the case of man. ”

“ The fittest to live need not be those with the most harmonious inner life nor the best possibilities. The fitness might be due to numbers, as in a political election, or to tough fibre, as in a tropical climate. ”

“ If we resort to an indirect test, and ask nature: 'Who are the fittest: those who are continually at war with each other, or those who support one another?' we at once see that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest. They have more chances to survive, and they attain, in their respective classes, the highest development of intelligence and bodily organization. ”

“ Those who bring it to bear upon human conditions heal themselves and others, they change their environment and turn a lamp to the feet of the struggling, they help all to get health, wealth, love and success, not tomorrow nor next year but here and now. ”

“ I recollect, years ago, reading a certain work by an American doctor on hygiene and the laws of life and the type of future humanity. I have forgotten its author's name and its title, but I remember well an awful prophecy that it contained about the future of our muscular system. Human perfection, the writer said, means ability to cope with the environment; but the environment will more and more require mental power from us, and less and less will ask for bare brute strength. ”

“ The physical body must unload its waste products or the bloated, discolored flesh is its reward. There is no mistaking the signals Nature sets on the face of the ordinary individual. It speaks its message in tones too plain to be overlooked. One has only to look at the great crowd of disease-laden folk,—just go to the rest-homes, or the hospitals, or homes. ”

“ We turn to the foetor and darkness that, in some obscure court, attend the robust brood who, coated in dirt, and with mud and refuse for playthings, live and thrive, and grow into manhood, and, in contrast to the pale face and flabby flesh of the aristocratic child, exhibit strength, vigour, and well-developed frames, and our belief in the potency of the life-giving elements of air, light, and cleanliness receives a shock that, at first sight, would appear fatal to the implied benefits of these, in reality, all-sufficient attributes of health and life. ”

“ The life they lead now, arduous as it is, not only has developed their muscles, their lungs, the power to digest their food, but they are useful members of society on the grand scale, and to fall from any height is not conducive to the well-being of body or spirit. ”

“ If the people would only read my books on physiology and hygiene, and learn something of the nature and laws of their own physical organization, and what will promote the health, growth and action of all its parts, and let that ‘old fable’ alone, they would be healthier, happier and better off every way. ”

“ But these questions seem to relate merely to our animal wants. We have all that is necessary for the health and comfort of the body, if that is all; and the richest person needs no more. But is the body all? Have we no minds to improve, no hearts to purify? ”

“ So many hours a day would require to be dedicated by every individual in health, to the exercise of his nervous and muscular systems, in labor calculated to give scope to these functions. The reward of obeying this requisite of his nature would be health, and a joyous animal existence; the punishment of neglect is disease, low spirits and death. ”

“ The civilized man must learn to gaze at this piece of Nature with pure eyes; reverence towards it must early sink into his soul. In the absence of this fundamental renovation, medical and social measures will merely produce refined animals. ”

“ Ah, prate as we will of the progress of the race, we are but forging additional fetters, unless we preserve that healthy physical development, those pure pleasures of mere animal existence, which are now only to be found among our semi-barbaric brethren. Our progress is nervous, when it should be muscular. ”

“ The reward of nature-abiding habits is not confined to the negative advantage of escaping the discomforts of disease. In the pursuit of countless competitive avocations the Art of Survival is a chief secret of success, but in this age of sanitary abuses our lives are mostly half-told tales. ”

“ I know of more than one community, whose moral, and in some measure physical health, would in my mere mortal and short sighted notion of the fitness of things, be vastly benefited by the visitation of an energetic, wide sweeping epidemic. ”

“ If we ask how we must live to secure the best health and longest life, the answer must be drawn from physiological knowledge; but if we ask how long the best mode of living will preserve life, the reply is, Physiology cannot teach you that. ”

“ Moodiness and perhaps a love of solitude are developed. "Growing fits" make hard and severe labor of body and mind impossible without dwarfing or arresting the development, by robbing of its nutrition some part of the organism—stomach, lungs, chest, heart, back, brain, etc.—which is peculiarly liable to disease later. It is never so hard to tell the truth plainly and objectively and without any subjective twist. The life of the mere individual ceases and that of person, or better, of the race, begins. It is a period of realization, and hence often of introspection. ”