6 EFFECTS OF ADAPTATION SEC. 



egoism could seriously make this assumption the individual 

 is nothing but a wheel in the clock-work of the universe ; to 

 the universe its characters must be subordinated, must be 

 adapted ; for the wheel, for the individual itself, only such a 

 proportion of advantage is possible as the order of the whole 

 allows, as in this order belongs to it." It is certainly no 

 adaptation in organic beings that they cannot live without 

 nourishment; and to the lamb devoured by the wolf the 

 deficiency of adaptation is particularly palpable, as it is to us 

 in death itself, our gradual extinction just when the highest 

 degree of knowledge and experience has been obtained. But 

 both hunger and death are conditioned by the substance of 

 which we are composed, and this again is conditioned by the 

 circulation between organic and inorganic nature. 



"Wherefore," I said, " have the calcareous or siliceous bodies 

 which crystallise out from the cells of a sponge, wherefore 

 have the calcareous spicules of the coral skeleton, wherefore 

 have the spicules of the Holothurian's skin, just this or that 

 exquisite form and no other ? Surely on the same grounds 

 on which a crystal has its definite form, and not on the 

 ground of utility. To what end the exquisite shapes of the 

 Kadiolaria, the exquisite sculpture, markings, and colours of 

 the mollusc's shell, which latter are, moreover, generally 

 covered throughout life by mud and dirt, and w r hose beauty 

 of line and colour often only appears after polishing ? To 

 what end the black colour of the peritoneum of many verte- 

 brates ? To what end the various delicately- wrought patterns 

 of the leaves of our foliage trees ? To what end the whiten- 

 ing of the hair and all the other changes of old age in animals 

 and in man ? To what end the necessity of material meta- 

 bolism, of death following the acquirement of the highest 

 degree of capacity and knowledge, of the highest adaptation 

 to the environment? Surely not for the advantage of the 

 individual, nor that of the species at most their use is to 



