ORIGIN OF ORGANIC FORMS 309 



hence quite unconsciously improve the race. They 

 do this, indeed, against their will, for had they the 

 choice they would quite willingly preserve even the less 

 satisfactory ones. By selecting individual animals they 

 improve the race in course of time, and yet in respect 

 of the result attained they work as a blind, unconscious 

 elementary force. 



Can we then admit unconscious selection in Nature ? 

 In order to make the question less startling let us put 

 it a little differently, and look at it in another light. 

 We have seen that in its simplest form the process of 

 selection reduces itself to the extermination of un- 

 satisfactory forms. Therefore we can substitute this 

 question by another : Do the unsatisfactory forms 

 become exterminated in Nature ? Such a process of 

 extermination would be equivalent to improvement, a 

 perfecting process. Science answers this question with a 

 most decided affirmative : yes, it says, they do become 

 exterminated in Nature to a very large extent, and with 

 inexorable strictness. This phenomenon is based upon 

 a property common to all organic beings. This property 

 consists in the fact that in the reproduction of 

 organisms is always involved their multiplication. 

 This fact is so universal, so constant, that the two 

 expressions are often interchangeable, multiplication 

 being used as a synonym for reproduction. In fact we 

 cannot name a single organism which would normally 

 produce only one single being during its life-time. On 

 the contrary multiplication generally takes place in 

 ever-increasing geometrical progression. This fact has 

 very important consequences, the significance of which 

 was first indicated by Darwin. We shall only fully 

 realise the rapidity with which organic beings reproduce 

 themselves if we take the trouble to calculate the 

 whole posterity of a single organism in a given number 

 of years. Thus, for instance, if all the posterity of a 

 single dandelion were preserved during ten or twelve 



