vin DARWINISM AND DESIGN 139 



a succession of warm seasons ; clearly the red will recover 

 their strength and the preponderance of the blue will be 

 reduced. At the end of the cycle, red, blue, and violet 

 will very likely exist in their original proportions. That 

 is, though the Darwinian factors, variability and natural 

 selection, have been fully and continually operative, the 

 species has not changed. Such a case, though I have 

 intentionally chosen an imaginary one, is not merely 

 hypothetical ; it is illustrated by a small but sufficient 

 number of persistent species which have remained 

 unchanged from very early geological times. Darwin 

 himself 1 mentions the Nautilus, the Lingula, and the 

 order of the Foraminifera, antique stick - in - the - muds 

 literally and metaphorically, which are the Chinese of the 

 animal world and have persisted without change from the 

 Laurentian and Silurian ages. And over shorter periods 

 a similar persistence under Natural Selection is the normal 

 condition of the organic world. Indeed, specific stability 

 is a much commoner result of Natural Selection than 

 Evolution. 



And further, not only are the Darwinian factors 

 perfectly compatible with a changeless persistence of 

 species, but they are equally well satisfied by change in a 

 direction which is the reverse of that which is actually 

 found to prevail. For not merely progressive evolution 

 but also degeneration may come about under the impartial 

 operation of variability and Natural Selection. Under 

 certain circumstances the more lowly organized may be 

 the fitter i.e. the better adapted to cope with the 

 conditions of life that prevail at the time ; and then 

 the higher must either die out or degenerate. Hence 

 biologists are familar with countless instances of de 

 generation everywhere. We ourselves are degenerate in 

 far more obvious and undeniable ways than sensationalists 

 like Nordau contend. We have lost our fur all except 

 a few patches on the head our ancestral tails, our pineal 

 eye, our sturdy claws and prehensile toes, the tapering tips 

 of our ears and the graceful power of attentively pricking 



1 Origin of Species, ii. pp. 83, 90, 117. 



