There is no law of nature here, it is the law of common sense and good government. We are surrounded by conditions best suited for strength and survival, and the conditions which promote weakness, disease and degeneracy are removed or beyond our reach.
In a nation of marauders or robbers, those who live by spoliation and the sword, would be the fittest to survive, and they would be a different type of men from those who get first place in a nation of traders, where fierceness and strength are less called for than tenacity of purpose and clearness of head.
When a man says he is poor, somebody says, that man is poor because he is not fitted to gain wealth. But we say, he is not fitted to gain wealth under the conditions of his life. Take him out of those conditions, put opportunities in his way and he becomes “fit” because he gains wealth. It is done every day.
One condition of society enables one kind of a man to succeed, another condition of society enables another kind of man to succeed. And so on all along the long line of different conditions.
The great mistake made by many so-called scientific purifiers of the human race, is in not being able to separate man with reason from animals or beasts without reasoning powers. There is such a thing as intellectual progress and the betterment of the reasoning faculties, but so long as we limit survivorship to the physical and not to the mental powers, we are betraying man into degeneracy instead of helping him out of it.
There is one great teacher whose lessons are to be learned and deeply pondered. They lead to an uplift that no money, and no medical examination, or selection, can possibly attain. He was poor and forsaken; rejected by his own, but he was and is the type to be attained. In establishing the highest type possible to man with reasoning powers, he ran counter to the doctrine of the survival of the fittest as men saw it in his day, so they crucified Him but too late to efface the type which we must follow or fall into degeneracy.
THE VICTORY OF THE MAN WHO DARES
This is the Era of the man who dares.
His opportunity has blossomed out of conditions unparalleled in the history of nations.
Too many have been plodding along in a furrow afraid to come out of the rut. They have lived, it is true, but they have not touched success. All animals live, but man has higher motives than mere existence.