LAMARCK 89 



beings than the ones that manifest them ; and there is nothing 

 anomalous or exceptional in either the poison of serpents or the 

 organs of reproduction, or in the altruistic moral sense of man. 



The conditions of life can stand, prior to selection, in no causal 

 relation to the life of any being except the one on which they act ; 

 but no fact in nature is more incontestable than the insignificance of 

 the individual, as compared with the welfare of the species. While 

 this has no existence apart from the series of individuals which com- 

 poses it, the individual counts for nothing in nature while the species 

 is supreme. 



The contrast between what we may call the solicitude of nature 

 to secure the production of new beings, and the ruthlessness with 

 which they are sacrificed after they have come into existence, is a 

 stumbling-block to the Lamarckian, and the crowning glory of 

 natural selection is that it solves this great enigma of nature, by 

 showing that it is itself an adaptation and a means to an end, for 

 the sacrifice of individuals is the means for perfecting the adjust- 

 ments of living things to the world around them and for thus 

 increasing the sum of life. 



The sacrifice of individuals is the means by which variety and 

 diversity in living nature, and the number of living beings, are 

 increased, and, if life is adjustment, as I believe to be the case, 

 the perfection and improvement of the adjustments of living beings 

 is in itself, and directly, an addition to the sum of life. 



"And this," says Harvey, "is the round that makes the race [of 

 the common fowl] eternal; now pullet, now hen, the series is con- 

 tinued in perpetuity ; from frail and perishing individuals an immor- 

 tal species is engendered. We therefore see individuals, males as 

 well as females, existing for the sake of preparing eggs, that the 

 species may be perennial though their authors pass away. And 

 it is indeed obvious that the parents are no longer youthful, or 

 beautiful, or lusty, and fitted to enjoy life, than while they possess the 

 power of producing and fecundating eggs, and, by the medium of 

 these, of engendering their like. But when they have accomplished 

 this grand purpose of nature, they have already attained to the 

 height of their being : the final end of their existence has been 

 accomplished ; after this, effete and useless, they begin to wither, and 

 as if cast off and forsaken of nature and the Deity, they grow 



