THE ARRIVAL OF THE FIT 



as strife and antagonism. Life gets on, for all 

 groping and blundering. There is the inherent 

 variability of living forms to begin with the 

 primordial push toward the development from 

 within which, so far as we can see, is not fortuitous, 

 but predestined; and there is the stream of influences 

 from without, constantly playing upon and modi- 

 fying the organism and taken advantage of by it. 



The essence of life is in adaptability; it goes into 

 partnership with the forces and conditions that sur- 

 round it. It is this trait which leads the teleological 

 philosopher to celebrate the fitness of the environ- 

 ment when its fitness is a foregone conclusion. Shall 

 we praise the fitness of the air for breathing, or of 

 the water for drinking, or of the winds for filling our 

 sails? If we cannot say explicitly, without speaking 

 from our anthropomorphism, that there is a guiding 

 intelligence in the evolution of living forms, we can 

 at least say, I think, that the struggle for life is 

 favored by the very constitution of the universe and 

 that man in some inscrutable way was potential in 

 the fiery nebula itself. 



