FITNESS AND ADAPTATION 81 



at various rates, because its innumerable constituents, at 

 different times and places, have attained different de- 

 grees of fitness, and have made adaptive discoveries and 

 inventions of very unequal value. 



Science is a fourfold record of these actions. Her 

 historians describe their sequence in terms of past 

 events; her morphologists, the products, in terms of 

 architecture, form, or structure; her physiologists, the 

 acts in the process of consummation; and her prophets 

 affirm, or deny, the continuity of these acts into the un- 

 explored, or inaccessible domains of nature-action. 



In the forward look of prophecy, science sees the 

 continuation of the same processes; that is, a gradual 

 increase of concerted, automatic action, and a decrease 

 in the destructive power of chance. 



This universal adaptability of nature's content 

 makes the consummation of her creative ends inev- 

 itable. It is an inexplicable power, but one ever mani- 

 fest to us as growth and progress. 



