32 THE SURVIVAL OF THE UNLIKE. [l. 



pleter harmony with surroundings, or other attributes. 

 I should like to suggest, therefore, that the chief merit 

 of the survivors is unlikeness, and to call your attention 

 for a few minutes to the significance of the phrase — 

 which I have used in my teaching during the last year — 

 the survival of the unlike. 



This phrase — the survival of the unlike — expresses no 

 new truth, but I hope that it may present the old truth 

 of vicarious or non -designed evolution in a new light. 

 It defines the fittest to be the unlike. You will recall 

 that in this paper I have dwelt upon the origin and pro- 

 gress of differences . rather than of definite or positive 

 characters. I am so fully convinced that, in the plant 

 creation, a new character is useful to the species because 

 it is unlike its kin, that the study of differences between 

 individuals has come to be, for me, the one absorbing 

 and controlling thought in the contemplation of the pro- 

 gress of life. These differences arise as a result of every 

 impinging force, — soil, weather, climate, food, training, 

 conflict with fellows, the strain and stress of wind and 

 wave, and insect visitors, — as a complex resultant of 

 many antecedent external forces, the effects of crossing, 

 and also as the result of the accumulated force of mere 

 growth; they are indefinite, non-designed, an expression 

 of all the various influences to which the passive vege- 

 table organism is or has been exposed; those differences 

 which are most unlike their fellows or their parents find 

 the places of least conflict, and persist because thej^ thrive 

 best, and thereby impress themselves best upon their off- 

 spring. Thereby there is a (constant tendency for new 

 and divergent lines to strike off, and these lines, as they 

 become accented, develop into what we, for convenience 

 sake, have called species. There are, therefore, as many 



