54 THE SURVIVAL OP THE UNLIKE. [l. 



conditions in which plants grow, and of the inci- 

 dental stimuli to which they are exposed; (2) the result 

 of the force of mere growth; (3) the outcome of sex- 

 ual mixing. Some of them may still be the expression 

 of the normal or original plasticity of organic matter, 

 although it is probable that most of this normal muta- 

 bility has been suppressed in the long process of 

 elimination. These variations survive because they 

 are unlike, and thereby enter fields of least competi- 

 tion. The possibility of the entire tragic evolution 

 lay in the plasticity of the original life-plasma. The 

 plastic creation has grown into its own needs day 

 by day and age by age, and it is now just what it 

 has been obliged to be. It could have been nothing 

 else. 



