Herbert Spencer, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The label presupposes that I carried the struggle of the brutes into human society and preached it to the rich. I did nothing of the kind. When M. de Laveleye implied that my view would countenance violent methods of replacing the inferior by the superior, I asked him why he wrote it, since in the very work before him he had proof that aggression of every kind is hateful to me, and that from my earliest book I have urged the change of every law which inflicts injustice or fails to remedy it.1
The survival I speak of in society is the survival of the industrially superior, of those fittest for the requirements of social life, and the struggle is subject to rigorous limitations.2 What the law does forbid is a particular act of the State. Where the pressure of population entails competition, and that competition is prevented from acting on a considerable part of the community, that part is spared the intellectual and moral stress by which faculty is developed, and leaves a posterity, and an increasing posterity, in which no higher development takes place.
There is a second evil equal or greater. Those not self-maintained are supplied by the better members, who must support themselves and their offspring and the inferior and theirs besides. The under-working of one part is matched by the over-working of the other, ending in illness, premature age, lessened or ill-reared families. The bad are fostered and the good are repressed.3
I named the undiscriminating charities of monasteries and the Poor Laws as instances.3 That is an indictment of coercive, wholesale agencies, and I have been careful to say so. Individual altruism, left to itself, will work advantageously, wherever at least it does not go to the extent of helping the unworthy to multiply. Parental affection, the regard of relatives, the spontaneous sympathy of friends and even of strangers, are in the order of things, and the reactive influence of that care on the giver is morally beneficial.4
But a mechanically-working State-apparatus, distributing money drawn from grumbling ratepayers, produces little or no moralizing effect on the capables to make up for the multiplication of the incapables.5 My reprobation is mainly directed against the public agencies which do coercively what should be done voluntarily.6 Little did I think these passages would bring on me condemnation as an enemy to the poor.
Four French periodicals have so condemned me, one bidding me return to the Lacedemonian exposure of children and asking what school of philosophy would count a Vincent de Paul or a Wilberforce enemies of the human race.7 I count them nothing of the sort. The question I put is whether compulsion, which deadens sympathy in the giver and breeds dependence in the receiver, can accomplish what free beneficence accomplishes.
A third of a century has brought me no reason to retreat; it has brought evidence strengthening the position. And the stranger fact is that now, when most cultivated people have learned how beneficently the survival of the fittest has worked, they are doing all they can to further the survival of the unfittest.8
The law by which each adult gets the good and the evil of his own nature and conduct is the condition of the welfare of the species. A society that gives benefits in proportion to incapacity rather than capacity transfers the cost of the inferior to the superior, multiplies the dependent and weakens the race. So the state, whose business is justice, may not take from the capable to maintain the incapable, and a poor law suspends the discipline by which human nature is improved.
But justice is not the whole of ethics. Private beneficence, the relief of the sick, the injured and the poor by those who know them, is a duty that grows with civilization; the evil is compulsory charity, not charity.91011
he has abundant proof that, above all things, aggression of every kind is hateful to me; and he scarcely needs telling that from my earliest book, written more than a third of a century ago, down to the present time, I have urged the change of all laws which either inflict injustice or fail to remedy injusticeVarious Fragments, enlarged ed
the survival of the fittest, as I construe it in its social applications, is the survival of the industrially superior and those who are fittest for the requurements of social lifeVarious Fragments, enlarged ed
the bad are fostered and the good are repressed.The Principles of Biology Vol 2, revised and enlarged ed
It may be fully admitted that individual altruism, left to itself, will work advantageously — wherever, at least, it does not go to the extent of helping the unworthy to multiply.The Study of Sociology, 13th ed
A mechanically-working State-apparatus, distributing money drawn from grumbling ratepayers, produces little or no moralizing effect on the capables to make up for multiplication of the incapables.The Study of Sociology, 13th ed
the reprobation I have expressed is mainly directed against the public agencies which do coercively what should be done voluntarilyThe Study of Sociology, 13th ed
Quelle e"cole de philosophie que celle ou un Las Cases, un Vincent de Paul, un abbe de I'fipee, un Wilberforce, seraient considered comme les ennemis de 1'espece humaine!The Study of Sociology, 13th ed
now more than ever before in the history of the world, are they doing all they can to further survival of the unfittest!The Man versus the State
And no one has more vehemently condemned that " miserable laissez-faire which calmly looks on while men ruin themselves in trying to enforce by law their equitable claims " Ethics, 271). Now that the remaining parts, treating of Beneficence, have been added to the rest, the perverse misinterpretation continues in face of direct disproofs.Various Fragments, enlarged ed
And here we come in sight of a truth on which politicians and philanthropists would do well to ponder. The salvation of every society, as of every species, depends on the maintenance of an absolute opposition between the regime of the family and the regime of the State. To survive, every species of creature must fulfil two conflicting requirements.The Principles of Sociology Vol 1, 3rd ed
So that a state, in setting up a national religion, stands in the anomalous position of a transgressor of those very rights, that it was instituted to defend. It is evident, therefore, that the restrictive principle, would never have permitted the establishment of a state church. And now, let us apply the test to that much-disputed question—the poor law.The Proper Sphere of Government
The position that made him the patron of social Darwinism in the twentieth-century reading and the one recent scholarship contests most: the man who coined the survival of the fittest also wrote a whole Part of the Ethics on beneficence.