The natural selection process is survival of the fittest.
He vaguely anticipates the modern idea of the world as a survival of the fittest when he says that many races may have lived and died out, and that those which still exist have been protected either by craft, courage or speed.
Although religious animosities between Christian nations have died out, although dynasties may now rise and fall without raising half Europe to arms, the springs of warlike enterprise are still to be found in commercial jealousies, in imperialistic ambitions and in the doctrine of the survival of the fittest which lends scientific support to both.
Spencer welcomed the Darwinian theory, and enriched it with the phrase" survival of the fittest "; but he did not give up the (Lamarckian) belief in the hereditary transmission of the modifications of organisms by the exercise of function.
He especially pointed out the laws of the " extinction of the specialized " and " survival of the non-specialized " forms of life, and challenged Darwin's principle of selection as an explanation of the origin of adaptations by saying that the " survival of the fittest " does not explain the " origin of the fittest."