38 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



all other respects they may be as well adapted as those 

 which survive, or even better. In the case we have con 

 sidered, it was the birds which selected the brown mice ; but 

 it is entirely beyond the capacity of man, and still more 

 obviously of other organisms, to predict and take measures 

 of protection against similar dangers. No superior keenness 

 of intellectual or instinctive prevision could have warned 

 the snipe that the swift and zigzag flight which is his peculiar 

 safeguard against his feathered enemies would make him 

 the favourite prey of the human sportsman. No single 

 adaptation, not even intellectual superiority, however great 

 an increase of power it may bring with it, can be relied on 

 as a defence against all the unforeseen assaults that may be 

 delivered by the environment ; nor can any accumulation 

 of them. If the one demanded by the special emergency 

 is not present, all the others are unavailing. The degree of 

 adaptation, if by that is meant the degree of complexity 

 which has already been attained, is immaterial. 



Enough for our present purpose has been said on those 

 two modes, or general classes, of natural action which bear 

 some resemblance to human selection. The third mode of 

 natural action which we had in mind was the ordinary 

 influence exercised by the environment generally on the 

 forms of life exposed to it. Here, it is certain, nothing which 

 remotely resembles selection can be found. The operations 

 of nature are uniform, and show no traces of differential 

 action when differing objects are exposed to them. The sun 

 shines, and the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike ; 

 and when there is a difference in the effect, the whole of that 

 difference must be traceable to differences in the organism 

 itself and its reactions. 



To go further into this question would involve the re 

 opening of the whole problem on its biological side. For this 

 I have no competence, and, fortunately, it is not material 

 to the ethical problems with which I am concerned. But 

 I am tempted to remark that there is no apparent reason 

 why the changing demands of the environment should not 

 be satisfied by stationary changes, such as we saw in the case 



