This law accounts, for instance, in some measure
probably for the relatively greater increase of whites than of Negroes
in the United States, in spite of the higher birth rate of the latter.
Other causes are, to be sure, also at work in this competition for
life; for one thing, the long period of intercommunication between
European races has largely weeded out the stocks most liable to certain
diseases, while the antecedent isolation of savage tribes, with no
such elimination at work, allows them to fall victims in greater numbers
to European diseases when mutual contact is established. But the degree
of the moralization of a people has been certainly one of the criteria
of survival; and thus by a purely mechanical elimination mankind has
grown more and more moral. It hardly needs to be added that the conscious
selection of codes that tend to preserve life is a factor of growing
importance in insuring movement in this same direction. Altogether,
moral progress consists primarily in an increasing adaptation of codes
to the preservation of life.
(2) Morality, however, makes not only for life, thus insuring its own
perpetuation; it makes also for happiness. Arbitrary and tyrannous
rules, cruel or needlessly prohibitive customs, engender restlessness,
and are not stable. Such barbarous morals may long persist, propped
by the power of the rulers, the superstitions of the people, and all
the forces of conservatism; but sooner or later they breed rebellion
and are cast aside.
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