72 THE REALM OF ORGANISMS CONTRASTED 



system developed from a much less differentiated, much 

 more diffuse, condition; it is certain that our earth has 

 passed through various stages of development, and has be- 

 come increasingly differentiated in its pattern and features ; 

 and many facts point to the occasional origin of new chemical 

 collocations in Nature; but there is nothing in the domain 

 of the inorganic which can be compared with any precision 

 to organic evolution and there is nothing that can be com- 

 pared to the struggle for existence. We are not justified in 

 saying that there may not have been elimination of unstable 

 collocations which could not last and had to be scrapped, but 

 this bears at most a superficial resemblance to the answering 

 back to environing limitations and difficulties which is 

 the essential feature of the organismal struggle for existence. 

 There is neither endeavour nor selection in the inorganic 

 domain, and till organisms emerged there was little or no 

 power of learning in the school of time. 



For plain people it was a very useful classification that 

 Samuel Butler suggested: Living Creatures, Machines, and 

 Things-in-General. Machines are inorganic material sys- 

 tems, but they must be kept quite by themselves in any dis- 

 cussion like this, for they are collocations put together by 

 man with a definite intention. They are purposive construc- 

 tions, and they are the only non-living things of which this 

 can be said. A river often cuts its way very effectively, 

 but we are romancing if we speak of its purpose. Its bed 

 is not adapted to it, as a flower to its insect visitor. The 

 concepts of adaptation and purposiveness do not apply in 

 the inorganic world, where there are no alternatives. 



It seems that the domain of the inorganic is con- 

 trasted with the realm of organisms by the absence of in- 

 dividuality, reproductivity, freedom of action, endeavour, 



