86 Metaphorical Explanation. 



intended to denote. Now, that fact, in utter 

 nakedness, is nothing more than the survival, in 

 the struggle for life, of an individual that has 

 somehow undergone modifications useful to it 

 under the actual conditions of existence. Or, in 

 Darwin s own words, &quot;This preservation of fa 

 vorable individual differences and variations, and 

 the destruction of those which are injurious, I 

 have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of 

 the Fittest.&quot; The process, therefore, does not 

 touch the origin of the variations, or even the 

 accumulation of them. Natural selection pro 

 duces nothing, either at the beginning or in the 

 progress of the development ; it means only that 

 when the variations have somehow appeared the 

 most advantageous are preserved, and that when 

 these favored forms have been somehow propa 

 gated, and thereby somehow consolidated, the most 

 favored again survive in the struggle. Nature 

 originates the modifications, nature propagates 

 them, nature accumulates them through propaga- 

 gation ; but how all this is done is a mystery on 

 which science throws no light, and the personifi 

 cation of nature serves only to disguise our real 

 ignorance. On the other hand, we can under 

 stand from the well-known fact of the increase 

 of life beyond the means of subsistence that, 



