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bers among civilized people to be protected by medicine and
do-gooders. In the same way that animal breeders improved

their stock lines through artificial selection, by eliminating the
weak and sickly, human societies needed to do the same:
No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals
will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It
is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed,
leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the
case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his
worst animals to breed. 105
With savages, the weak in body and mind are soon eliminated;
and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of
health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to
check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbe-
cile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our
medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one
to the last moment. … Thus the weak members of civilised soci-
eties propagate their kind. 106
These words, the work of a diseased mentality, formed the

basic encouragement for racists, proponents of eugenics and
supporters of war; and eventually inflicted terrible catastrophes
on humanity. At the end of The Descent of Man, Darwin made a
great many more unscientific claims, including that the "strug-
gle for existence" benefited humanity, in that the more gifted
would be more successful in the battle of life than the less gifted;
and that without it, people would sink into indolence. 107
With these distorted theories, Darwin laid the groundwork
for eugenic practices. The theory of evolution being regarded as
so-called scientific fact led to eugenist and racist policies being
accepted and put into practice.

The Social Weapon: Darwinism