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The Survival of the Fittest, the

Survival of Both

Competition creates challenges, challenges act as incentives
to increased effort, and this leads to reaching new heights of
success.

odern industry was a boon for mankind, but at the
Msame time its existence created a bad and unfair
situation. Those who were able to invest more money
in industry emerged as masters of the market, while
moneyless people were seen as a deprived group. This
situation in the economy created a new saying, that is,
compete or perish.
An English thinker, Herbert Spencer (1820 –
1903), justified this development by a theory which he
termed Social Darwinism. This theory, according to
him, means, “Society is like a living organism. Just as
biological organisms evolve through natural selection,
society evolves and increases in complexity through
the survival of the fittest, that is, the preservation of
favoured races in the struggle for life.” Where Darwin
had applied this concept to biological phenomena,
Spencer applied it to socio-economic phenomena.

In science, Darwinism is still a controversial theory.
At present I have nothing to say on this score. But I
would like to say a few words about Social Darwinism.

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