3 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



that even an approximate consensus of opinion among biologists will 

 ever issue from such general discussion of the " natural selection fac- 

 tor " as has been carried on during the last half century ? I do not 

 think so. The most that can be said for such views is that they stim- 

 ulate research. But there is an aphorism in hygiene about over stimu- 

 lation that ought not to be forgotten even in science, when stimulants 

 are advocated. 



What more prophetic utterance of Darwin's can be found than that 

 made to Wallace after he had thought over natural selection for twenty 

 years ? " My work/' he said, " will not fix or settle anything." 



Another important matter that Darwin never laid hold upon with 

 sufficient grip is the great significance of struggle aside from its role in 

 species production. The numberless things that struggle may accom- 

 plish short of killing somebody, did not greatly attract his attention. 

 From his standpoint struggle short of life and death struggle seems 

 not to have counted for much. So in his writings struggle almost 

 always appears as " struggle for existence." 



Nature is exactly a vast system of parts, each part having a nature 

 of its own, but at the same time being dependent upon innumerable 

 other parts. 



" Natural selection " (the expression has for the most part been 

 restricted to the living world, but there is no essential reason why it 

 should be. It would be quite as explanatory of the process of origina- 

 tion, applied in the inorganic, as in the organic, realm) is that complex 

 of operations by which natural bodies get so located that the capabilities 

 of portions of nature for doing their part toward the sustentation of 

 other portions are utilized to the best advantage. Otherwise stated, it is 

 the method by which organisms become arranged in nature according 

 to their special needs and merits. In this operation, inconvenience, in- 

 jury and destruction often result. But such results are among others, 

 rather than the end and aim, the total result of the process. In many 

 cases, though by no means in all, it must play a large part in determin- 

 ing the characteristics, especially in late life, of individual organ- 

 isms. In a word, natural selection is probably one vera causa in species 

 formation. In what instances it has been thus influential, and how 

 far this influence has gone, are matters to be ascertained, as far as 

 possible, in each particular case. If Greenland has the wherewithal 

 to support men, in however meager and cheerless a way, it is at least 

 as reasonable to conceive Mother Nature (if one is to personify na- 

 ture) as congratulating herself that she has some men able to accept 

 such bounty and like it, as to conceive her as fiendishly gloating, or 

 filled with impotent grief, as the case may be, over having crowded a 

 few of her mortal beings off into so hard a quarter. Darwin did not 

 view the process in this light very much. 



