358 THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE 



structure, the hypothetical albuminoids in which some 

 biologists suggest that life originated. 



We are, then, face to face with the problem of how far 

 this physical selection continued to act during the evolu- 

 tion of the earliest organic substances. How far was it the 

 chief factor in the processes which we conceive as modelling 

 both the chemical constitution and the physical structure 

 of the earliest life-germs ? The first organic corpuscles 

 must have been so close to the inorganic, and must have 

 had an environment so essentially inorganic and not 

 organic, that the test of relative physical stability must 

 surely have been more important than the competition of 

 superabundant organisms of varying types with each other. 

 To those who have accustomed themselves to look upon 

 organic substance as essentially differing from inorganic 

 only by complexity of chemical and physical structure, 

 the notions of organic and inorganic environment, of the 

 elimination of the unfit and the destruction of less stable 

 compounds — in short, the notions of biological and 

 physical selection — shade insensibly one into the other. 

 Selection will be physical when the environment is more 

 inorganic than organic, and biological or natural in the 

 converse case. But those naturalists who postulate a 

 special organic corpuscle are certainly called upon to 

 decide how and when the formula of natural selection 

 begins to govern its evolution, and what part, if any, 

 physical selection has played in the determination of its 

 chemical and physical constitution. 



^ 13. — Natural Selection and the History of Man 



Passing to the superior limit we have next to ask, 

 How far are the principles of natural selection to be 

 applied to the historical evolution of man .? To judge by 

 the author's experience of historical literature, we should 

 have to say that up till very recent times historians have 

 assumed that the historical development of man cannot 

 be briefliy resumed in wide-reaching formulas ; that history 

 is all facts and no factors. But that natural history, the 



