300 LESSONS FROM NATURE. [CHAP. IX. 



The answer may seem surprising to some, but it is none 

 the less true, that &quot; Natural Selection &quot; is simply nothing. It 

 is an apparently positive name for a really negative effect, 

 and is therefore an eminently misleading term. By &quot; Natural 

 Selection &quot; is meant the result of all the destructive agencies 



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of nature, destructive to individuals and to races by destroy 

 ing their lives or their powers of propagation. Evidently 

 the cause of the distinction of species (supposing such dis 

 tinction to be brought about in natural generation) must be 

 that which causes variation, and variation in one determinate 

 direction in at least several individuals simultaneously. At 

 the same time it is freely conceded that the destructive 

 agencies of nature do succeed in preventing the perpetua 

 tion of monstrous, abortive, and feeble attempts at the 

 performance of the evolutionary process, that they remove 

 rapidly antecedent forms when new ones are evolved more 

 in harmony with surrounding conditions, and that their 

 action results in the promotion of new characters when these 

 have once attained sufficient completeness to be of real 

 utility to their possessor. 



Continued reflection, and five years further pondering 

 over the problem of specific origin, have more and more 

 convinced me the conception that the origin of all species, 

 &quot;man included,&quot; is due simply to conditions which are 

 (to use Mr. Darwin s own words ) &quot;strictly accidental,&quot; is 

 a conception utterly irrational. This conception is not that 

 of Mr. Wallace, who makes of man a special exception. 

 With regard to the conception as now put forward by 

 Mr. Darwin, however, I cannot truly characterize it but by 

 an epithet which I employ only with much reluctance. I 

 weigh my words, and have present to my mind the many 

 distinguished naturalists who have accepted the notion, and 

 yet I cannot hesitate to call it a &quot; puerile hypothesis&quot; I call 

 it puerile and not infantine, because in the infancy of nations 

 as of individuals the tendency is to explain each visible 

 action by a direct supernatural intervention. Eeaction from 

 this infantine condition tends to the exclusion from our 



