Note 15 — Chapter III · EQUALITY

Nature’s failures and society’s failures are not identical. Nature’s failure is frequently a creature below par, he is frequently botched and undesirable. Society’s failure may be an extremely desirable person, to whom modern conditions are so loathsome that he cannot adapt himself to them and become successful. That is why the Eugenists, who are prone to class the unsuccessful of the age with the undesirable, still have a good deal to learn. The unsuccessful now-a-days are certainly the biologically “unfit”; but the question that must be decided before you conclude that they are also “undesirable” is whether present conditions demand desirable or undesirable qualities in those who become successfully adapted to them,—in those, that is to say, who are “fit.”