78 Philosophic Explanation. 



ral selection produces nothing ; it only culls from 

 . what j^already in existence. The survival of the 

 fittest is an eliminative, not an originative, process. 

 And yet it is the explication of this apparently 

 subsidiary process that constitutes Darwinism. 

 The fact of variations in organic beings having 

 been demonstrated from the experience of breed 

 ers, the sphinx of science was the problem of their 

 accumulation into specific characters. It was not 

 the business of biology to consider what the fact 

 of variations implied. That falls to philosophy, 

 whose function it is to examine the starting- 

 points and first principles with which the various 

 sciences uncritically set about their specific task. 



The survival of the fittest, I repeat, does not 

 explain the arrival of the fittest. Natural selec 

 tion is a term connoting the fact that of the in 

 numerable variations occurring in organisms only 

 the most beneficial are preserved, but it indicates 

 nothing concerning the origin or nature of these 

 variations. As in them, however, is ^veloped 

 all that is subsequently ^veloped, they form the 

 sole ground for philosophizing in connection with 

 Darwinian science. 



Fortunately, too, Darwin and his followers 

 have not left us in utter darkness with regard 

 to the rise of these modifications, which, as we 





