I FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS 15 



seems to operate blindly and mechanically without any view 

 to that improvement of species which results. But this 

 general struggle is actually composed of infinite little con- 

 crete struggles in which the fit deliberately destroy the unfit. 

 And the trend of the struggle is towards organic progress 

 actually because of the character of the little concrete strug- 

 gles. I do not mean to say that the striving, struggling indi- 

 vidual in nature intends to improve its species. But it does 

 fight for itself or its family or its tribe ; and in so far as it is 

 more " fit " than its beaten opponent it is in effect fighting 

 the battle of organic progress. The psychical purposive 

 character of the little concrete struggles imparts a psycho- 

 logical purposive character to the generalised factor of Nat- 

 ural Selection. In fact the current view of Natural Selection 

 is a very striking illustration of the way in which a so-called 

 mechanical force or cause is gratuitously constituted by 

 abstraction and generalisation and statistical summation 

 from elements which in their individual character and 

 isolation are undoubtedly psychical and purposive. And 

 this only shows how careful we must be to scrutinise 

 concrete details and not to rest satisfied with large general- 

 isations, if we would know what really happens in nature. 

 Abstraction and generalisation, however useful and neces- 

 sary for scientific purposes, do largely deprive real events 

 of their true characters, which are vital to a correct 

 understanding of reality. 



To sum up, therefore: apart from the influence of the 

 physical environment, the motive and directive forces of 

 organic Descent in the form of Natural and Sexual Selection 

 are psychical and not merely mechanical. And this result 

 of the special Darwinian theoYy is therefore in complete 

 accord with the more general considerations which we 

 derived from the analysis of Evolution in general. Both in 

 Evolution as a whole and in Darwin's more special theory of 

 organic Descent, life and mind are no mere shadows or un- 

 real accompaniments of some real mechanical process; they 

 are there in their own right as true operative factors, and 

 play a real and unmistakable part in determining both the 



