14 DARWINISM VERIFIED. [i. 



take account only of the individuals which survive 

 the embryo or larva state, but do not succeed in 

 leaving offspring behind them, the cases of destruc- 

 tion would still bear an enormous ratio to the cases 

 of preservation. But in maintaining the character- 

 istics of a race only those individuals can be counted 

 who produce offspring. It is obvious then that each 

 species of organisms, as we know it, consists only of 

 a few favoured individuals selected out of countless 

 multitudes who have been tried and rejected as un- 

 worthy to live. No selection that is exercised by 

 man compares in rigour with this. It is somewhat 

 as if a breeder of race-horses were to choose, with 

 infallible accuracy of judgment, the two or three 

 fleetest out of each hundred thousand, destroying all 

 the rest that the high standard of the breed might 

 run no possible risk of deterioration. In such a 

 rigorous competition as this, no individual peculiarity 

 can be so slight that we are entitled to regard it as 

 unimportant. No peculiarity is really slight that 

 enables its possessor to survive until he transmits it 

 to posterity. 



In view of all this we see how misleading it is to 

 describe natural selection (as Mr. Mivart does) as a 

 process which operates only occasionally upon varia- 

 tions assumed to be fortuitous. We see that natural 



