136 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



Such being the case, we are led to wonder how so obvious an 

 inconsistency came to be overlooked how adaptation and sur 

 vival came to be used, as if they, unlike all other terms, pos 

 sessed at least a core of absolutely fixed significance. The only 

 answer which suggests itself is that these terms are, indeed, 

 fundamental to the Darwinian theory, in which the psychology 

 of pragmatism took its rise. In that theory, survival passes for 

 the essential precondition of all the various phenomena of life ; 

 and adaptation is defined in turn as the precondition of survival. 

 A very cursory examination, however, serves to show that neither 

 conception can maintain its integrity. Survival, for example, 

 changes its meaning most plastically according to the object to 

 which it is referred. The survival of the individual is one thing, 

 and the survival of the species is another; while the survival 

 of the group which is as compatible with extinction of an original 

 stock as survival of the species is compatible with the downfall 

 of all its individuals implies no more than that successors to its 

 former membership remain; and the manner in which admission 

 to membership in the group takes place is practically unlimited, 

 varying according to the nature of the group in question. The 

 survival of a custom or an art is similarly independent of that of 

 the group which practices or cultivates it. Taken generally, 

 therefore, survival is one of the vaguest and emptiest of concepts. 

 It means no more than continued existence; and, as is the case 

 with existence itself, its meaning changes enormously with the 

 subject of which it is predicated. 



Why, then, has the survival of the species been conceded such 

 preeminence as the end of all organic functions? Simply because 

 organisms reproduce after their kind, and such reproduction is, 

 in general, the only means by which traits are transmitted from 

 one generation to another. The term end, as used in this con 

 nection, is, of course, originally a metaphor derived from human 

 purposes: the end of a function is the interesting outcome toward 

 which it appears to be directed. Strictly speaking, however, 

 the term has come to indicate primarily an effect which is essential 



