The pseudo-scientific, teleological vision of an evolutionary paradise of perfect beings in some distant future was nothing but a tattered lab coat pulled on over an old, essentially religious idea—the idea of humanity’s eventual transcendence and the advent of the New Man. Nonetheless, “survival of the fittest” soon became both apology and rallying cry for laissez-faire capitalism, and also for eugenicist demands to give evolution a helping hand by preventing “inferior” people from breeding.
