LIFE AND WORKS OF DARWIN 339 



and other descent series entirely unknown in Darwin's time certainly 

 prove beyond question that law rather than chance is prevailing in 

 variation. 



What the nature of these laws is it is still too early to say. Per- 

 sonally I am strongly of the opinion that the laws of life, like the ulti- 

 mate laws of physics, may ultimately prove to be beyond analysis. 



To allow myself just one flight of fanciful statement drawn from 

 personal observation and reflection I may say there is a likeness 

 between the unit forces working in a single organism, both as revealed 

 by the microscope and in fossil series, and the individual soldiers 

 composing a giant army. The millions of well-ordered activities in 

 the body correspond with the millions of intelligently trained men who 

 compose the army; the selection process or the survival of the fittest 

 is like the competition between two armies, between the Eussian and 

 Japanese, for example. It is an outward and visible competition 

 between two internally prepared and well-ordered hosts of units and 

 groups of units. Selection is continuously working upon the army as 

 a whole and also upon every unit which affects survival — an immunity 

 unit, an intelligence unit, a speed unit, a color or group of color units ; 

 just as in the army it is working upon units of courage, of strategy, 

 of precision of fire, of endurance, of mass. In this sense it is perfectly 

 true to say with Darwin " that selection works upon certain single 

 variations." It is not true or at least it is not shown, that these varia- 

 tions are a matter of chance ; they rather appear to be a matter of law 

 as indeed Darwin foresaw when he stated that he used the word 

 " chance " merely as a synonym of " ignorance." 



In the present state of biology we are studying the behavior of the 

 thousands of parts, sometimes of blending, sometimes of separate, 

 sometimes of paired or triplicate units, Avhich compose the whole and 

 make up the individual organism. Natural selection determines which 

 organism shall win; more than this, it determines which serviceable 

 activities of each organism shall win. Here lie the limits of its 

 power. Selection is not a creative principle, it is a Judicial principle. 

 It is one of Darwin's many triumphs that he positively demonstrated 

 that this judicial principle is one of the great factors of evolution. 

 Then he clearly set our task before us in pointing out that the unknown 

 lies in the laws of variation and a stupendous task it is. At the same 

 time he left us a legacy in his inductive and experimental methods by 

 which we may blaze our trail. 



Therefore, in this anniversary year, we do not see any decline in 

 the force of Darwinism but rather a renewed stimulus to progressive 

 search. As Huxley says: 



But tnis one thing is perfectly certain — that is, it is only by pursuing his 

 method, by that wonderful single-mindedness, devotion to truth, readiness to 

 sacrifice all things for the advance of definite knowledge, that we can hope to 



