REMARKS ON NATURAL SELECTION. 349 



from the conditions which accumulate and perfect such 

 variation, that is to say, he implies a radical difference 

 between the process of variation and the process of 

 selection. This I have already said does not seem to 

 me acceptable ; the selection I conceive to be simply 

 the variation which has survived." * 



Certainly those animals and plants which are best 

 fitted for their environment, or, as Lamarck calls it, 

 " circonstances " those animals, in fact, which are best 

 fitted to comply with the conditions of their existence 

 are most likely to survive and transmit their especial 

 fitness. No one would admit this more readily than 

 Lamarck. This is no theory; it is a commonly 

 observed fact in nature which no one will dispute, but 

 it is not more " a means of modification " than many 

 other commonly observed facts concerning animals. 



Why is " the survival of the fittest " more a means of 

 modification than, we will say, the fact that animals 

 live at all, or that they live in successive generations, 

 being born, continuing their species, and dying, instead 

 of living on for ever as one single animal in the common 

 acceptation of the term; or than that they eat and 

 drink ? 



The heat whereby the water is heated, the water 

 which is turned into steam, the piston on which the 

 steam acts, the driving wheel, &c., &c., are all one as 

 much as another a means whereby a train is made to 

 go from one place to another ; it is impossible to say 

 that any one of them is the main means. So (mutatis 

 mutandis) with modification. There is no reason there- 

 * 'Physical Basis of the Mind/ p. 109, 1878. 



