84 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



for similar purposes in the hands and fingers, the bluntness of 

 the sense of smell, such as to render it useless for the de 

 tection of prey which is concealed all these are features which 

 stand in strict and harmonious relation to the mental powers 

 of man. But apart from these, they would place him at an 

 immense disadvantage in the struggle for existence. This, 

 therefore, is not the direction in which the blind forces of 

 natural selection could ever work. 11 



The imaginary brute developing in the direc 

 tion of man would by the very hypothesis have 

 been immeasurably below the lowest of the human 

 race and must therefore inevitably have suc 

 cumbed in the struggle with the powerful and 

 terrible beasts of prey among which its lot would 

 have been cast. 



Darwinism, as the solution of the origin of spe 

 cies, has passed. Natural selection, as De Vries 

 cleverly says, &quot;acts as a sieve.&quot; 12 It cannot pro, 

 duce new species. It does not even single out the 

 best variations. It simply permits the larger num 

 ber of the unfit to drop out of existence. In this 

 way it may help to keep a species at a certain 

 standard and may even, under special circum 

 stances, tend to improve it accidentally. &quot;Though 

 it may account for the survival of the fittest it 

 cannot account for their arrival.&quot; The theory 

 of evolution still continues under a thousand dif 

 ferent forms, but in these natural selection oc 

 cupies a very subordinate place. 



n Duke of Argyll, &quot;Primeval Man,&quot; p. 66. 



&quot;DeVries^ &quot;Darwinism and Modern Science,&quot; p. 70- 



