TENTATIVE VARIATION WITH HEREDITY. i) 
of thus shaping his relations belongs to man. Civilized man not only 
changes his relations to the environment, but by agriculture and other 
arts transforms the environment to suit his own needs. In all its 
-action inorganic matter is completely indifferent to the character of 
the results, either within the mass that is acting or in things external 
to it; but organic life is, throughout all its grades, striving to attain 
an increasing power of race preservation under given conditions, 
and, in its highest manifestation in man, it breaks largely away from 
the ancient thraldom, and assumes an ever-increasing control of the 
environment. 
6. The Chief Method of Advance is Tentative Variation with Transmission 
to Offspring of the Endowments of the Survivors. 
Throughout this whole struggle for ascendency the principal method 
of advance is the sending forth of various tentative experiments in the 
form of variously endowed individuals presenting many methods of 
dealing with the environment, each individual that survives having 
some influence on the endowments of the next generation. This 
law of the survival of the fittest applies to all from the lowest to the 
highest; but the qualities that constitute fitness differ progressively. 
In one stage, strength and such weapons as teeth and claws are of the 
greatest importance; in another stage, the degree of intelligence and 
the power to produce artificial weapons is the test; and, in a still 
higher stage, the power of social organization and the ethical ideals 
that form the foundation for such organization become the supreme 
necessity for survival. But throughout itis the same law of survival, 
the survival of the fittest, the future continuance of those fitted to 
continue. Though plants are without conscious purpose, we neces- 
sarily regard their production of flowers and seed as anticipatory 
action; for the whole significance of the process is found in its helping 
to secure continued propagation. 
To an observer at the equator, the sun rises and sets each twenty- 
four hours, moving ina circle nearly perpendicular to the horizon, 
while to an observer at the North Pole the sun would rise and set but 
once in a year, and in each twenty-four hours would move through a 
complete circle nearly parallel to the horizon, traveling, as conven- 
tional language would say, from left to right; and to an observer at 
the South Pole, the same sun would rise and set but once in a year, 
and would circle in the reverse direction, that is, from right to left. 
Now, in such a case as this, we do not say that the cosmic process is 
changed. So also, in the case of ethical man, I would not say, as Hux- 
ley does, that his life is in opposition to the cosmic process, but rather 
that he has attained to one of the higher stages of that process, in 
which the meek are the ones who inherit the earth. 
