Mr. E. V. Neale on Typical Selection. §§§ 



ganisms considered individually. The struggle with circumstances 

 destroys the dead, but it developes and exercises the living indivi- 

 dual ; and so the struggle for existence developes the capacities of 

 variation of each typical form,- while it prevents those variations from 

 injuring the type. For the order of the living creation depends upon 

 the more or less perfect transmission of the distinctive peculiarities 

 of each living being to its descendants ; and since these peculiarities 

 are subject to constant variation, there would be a tendency to a 

 perpetual degradation of each natural type but for some countei'acting 

 influence. For the characters of a living being cannot be balanced like 

 ciphers in arithmetic — so inany good on the jj^ms side, so many bad 

 on the minus : they involve a mutual harmony, which cannot be 

 departed from far in any direction without fatal injury to the whole : 

 one vice spoils many virtues ; and the union of great perfections with 

 great defects can, at the best, be only grotesque. 



Now the risk of degradation consequent on these circumstances 

 appears to be prevented principally by two causes : first, that, in the 

 general course of nature, more than one individual must concur in 

 every act of generation ; for since these individuals commonly differ 

 in their accidental peculiarities, these peculiarities tend to efface each 

 other, and thus to preserve in their offspring the typical character : 

 secondly, that Death is, so to speak, ever on the watch to keep the 

 individual up to the mark, sternly sweeping away the varieties 

 afflicted with any serious imperfection, while he leaves the more 

 perfect specimens to transmit their endowments to their posterity, — 

 an operation probably aided by what Mr. Darwin has called " sexual 

 selection." 



In this conservative action, not in the creative operations ascribed 

 to Death by Mr. Darwin, his true function appears to me to consist. 

 Death throws away the worst of each kind to preserve the best ; but 

 he must have the kind given him to operate upon. So he sweeps 

 away those types which change of circumstances have made unsuit- 

 able to the surrounding creation, to make room for others ; but these 

 are educed from the former, not by the unconscious action of death, 

 but through an "ordained becoming," realized by the wise foresight 

 of the ever-acting Power whose works we generalize into Nature. 



Our greatest living poet has poured forth the dirge of existence : — 



Are God and Nature, then, at strife. 

 That Nature lends such fearful dreams ? 

 So careful of the type she seems. 



So careless of the single life. 



So careful of the type ! but no, 

 From scarped clifF, and quarried stone, 

 She cries, " A thousand types are gone, 



I care for nothing — all shall go." 



But the history of organized being, considered as a succession of 

 typical forms, assumes a more cheerful character ; life appears 

 everywhere triumphant over death. As in the order of nature the 

 individual transmits to its successors its own peculiarities, modified, 

 indeed, but not lost in the great stream of being, so each type, if it passes 



