222 DARWIXIANISM. 



absolutely relative. According^ to " the haughty Persian" 

 in Gibbon (c. 65), "even the casses, the smallest of fish, 

 find their place in the ocean." 



The fittest to survive is he who has varied to 

 advantage in the struggle for life ; for, of course, he 

 who has varied to disadvantage must simply go to the 

 wall. But is there any stop, then, in this rise to 

 advantage ? Nay, rather, how can any one see a stop ? 

 By the very terms of the doctrine any end to the 

 process does not for a moment appear. But if there be 

 no limit to the propagation of the beneficiaries of an 

 advantage, what, simply of necessity, must be the result ? 

 Is it possible in such a struggle a struggle that just 

 constitutes existence is it possible in such a struggle 

 for even a single competitor to survive him who is the 

 fittest to survive ? If individual with individual, species 

 with species, genus with genus, must struggle, how is it 

 that the infinitude of time has not already reduced all 

 life to a single unit ? Ah, but as we have seen indeed 

 the race is not to the swift ; it is from a novelist that 

 I again borrow a truth : " I shall come back if I am 

 alive. How you say that : you are as strong as I. 

 Stronger, perhaps. But then who knows ? The weak 

 ones sometimes last the longest." The soft pod of the 

 pea is quite as happy with its seed as the hard stone of 

 the cherry. When we sneeze we draw our breath 

 through our nostrils: if this were not so, to sneeze when 

 we have food in our mouths would be to die. Is it the 

 variation to, and the propagation of, advantage that has 

 killed off every man and woman, and the children of 

 every man and woman, that sneezed through their mouths 

 when they ate ? 



And then against the ordinary moralisation of exist- 

 ence, is it possible to support the survival of the fittest ? 

 Thus Napier of Merchiston, in reference to the patronage 



