Anglo-Saxon Supremacy or Race Contributions to Civilization

Excerpt from Anglo-Saxon Supremacy or Race Contributions to Civilization

The difference between the Law of Survival under.the reign of which animals make their way in the world, and the Law of Survival by the observance of which human beings attain supremacy, is infinite. According to the Law of Survival which prevails among animals and plants, only the fittest, the physically strongest, have any promise of a career. The living creatures in the natural world tend to multiply at so rapid a rate that any one species, were it not kept in check, would in a few generations over-populate the globe and utterly outgrow all possible means of subsistence. Bishop Randolph S. Foster calculated that if all the English sparrows that arc hatched were permitted to live and propagate their species, it would not be many generations before enough of them would come into existence to cover the face of the earth more than a mile deep.

Because so many more animals are born than can find food enough to live on, and because there arc so many more seeds produced by the trees and plants than can find soil enough to grow on, there is necessarily a great struggle for existence perpetually raging everywhere. According to the Law of Survival in the natural world, the many that are weak are sacrificed for the sake of the few that are strong. According to the Law of Survival in the human world, the few who are strong sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the many who are weak. The law of animal survival is aristocratic; it preserves and justifies the struggles of the
few against the many.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.