274 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD CHAP. 



variety. Of course we must remember that variation 

 in other types constitutes a change in the " environ- 

 ment " of any one type, whether the altered neighbour 

 was a former competitor, or a former ally, or liable 

 formerly to be preyed upon, or making prey formerly 

 of the type in question. It follows that a constant 

 environment, such as "progress" involves, can only 

 be affirmed in a relative and limited sense. And 

 therefore we must similarly qualify the connected asser- 

 tion of continuous organic advance and improvement as 

 the result of natural selection. 



A third difficulty strikes one in connection with 

 the lowest organisms. Certain shells or the human 

 physique have ceased progressing because they have 

 reached the allotted goal ; good, but why have the 

 lowest not moved up? Experimental science refuses 

 to admit abiogenesis. Wherever life came from at 

 first, it does not now arise from a rearrangement of 

 dead matter. If " all were in motion," including the 

 initiation de novo of life, then we should see through 

 the difficulty. Infusorians would be infusorians only 

 that and nothing more because they had not had 

 time to climb up the ladder. But apparently, in point 

 of fact, they have had just as much time as the cedars 

 of Lebanon or the crowning race of man ; and in that 

 time, of course, a vastly greater number of generations. 

 Then why are they still mere common infusorians ? 

 Take it either way ; why have they not progressed out 

 of that state of being ; or, at any rate, why have they 

 not varied? Through billions on billions of genera- 

 tions to put it modestly they have been competing 

 against each other and against the cruelty of environ- 

 ment. Why are they still no fitter? or, if they are 

 fit enough to survive why has any other organism 



