ON ADAPTATION 
We have seen the price which variation costs; 
now we begin to see the value of it. Among 
those violets, environment—the environment of 
the present combining with heredity which is the 
recorded environment of all the past—contrived 
to see that there were no duplicates; that each 
violet, a little different from its mate, might, 
through its difference, be suited to a separate 
purpose, or fitted to carry a separate burden, or 
designed to fill a separate want. 
If the violets had been as like as pins, they 
would have stayed as like as pins when planted 
in that friendly dooryard. 
But because each had within it the power of 
transmitting variation, the power of responding, 
ever so little, to the trend of its surroundings, one 
violet became a pansy. 
Among our human acquaintances we know 
those who are sturdy, and those who are weak; 
those who have well developed minds at the 
expense of their muscles, and those who have well 
developed muscles at the expense of their minds, 
and those with a more evenly balanced develop- 
ment; we know some who are tall and some who 
are short; some with brown eyes and some with 
blue; some who lean toward commerce, and some 
who lean toward art; and on and on, throughout 
[135] 
————— lll ell eee 
