170 The Bible of Nature 



nature, the only kind of elimination that counts in 

 evolution is discriminate elimination, and what is 

 discriminable cannot be fortuitous. 



There seems to be nothing but misunderstand- 

 ing in the allegation that the evolutionist interpre- 

 tation relies on fortuitousness. If a cone falls from 

 the fir tree under which we are sitting and kills 

 a spider creeping on the ground, we say that it is 

 quite fortuitous that cone and spider happen to 

 come together at the same time in the same place. 

 But progress in Nature does not depend on this 

 sort of phenomenon. The elimination that counts 

 is discriminate elimination. 



But are not the variations that count fortuitous ? 

 It is difficult to see much meaning in the term ex- 

 cept that we are very ignorant of the antecedent 

 conditions. Whether we believe that discon- 

 tinuous mutations are of most moment, or that the 

 fluctuations Darwin relied on are more important, 

 whether we believe that variation is due to the 

 stimulus of the variable body on the complex germ- 

 plasm or to a germinal struggle of hereditary items, 

 there is no good reason for calling them fortuitous. 

 We must get away from the wooden way of think- 

 ing of variations as if they were so many coins 

 which the organism took out of its pockets and 

 staked in the game of life. Variations are always 

 expressions of the creature's individuality, of its 

 creative genius; they correspond to the poet's 



