432 APPENDIX 



Chance only selects to a certain degree. 



This view thus removes an objection which has so often 

 been raised against the Darwinian attempt to explain the 

 evolution of the organic world, namely, the predominance of 

 chance, while on the otlier hand it does not undervalue the 

 importance of Darwinism. It sees the essential factor in the 

 origin of species in the progress towards, or the temporary 

 continuance in, definite stages of evolution (genepistatic 

 evolution). 



And so we can imagine all forms which externally show 

 their connection with one another — apart from the fact that 

 they are also connected by their internal organisation, only in 

 a manner wliich is not so clear to every one, — ^ve can imagine 

 the whole series of all the individuals of one line of descent 

 at a given moment united together into a whole, if we con- 

 ceive that the whole course of evolution which has taken 

 place in organic nature in the course of endless periods is 

 condensed into this moment. Then we should again have 

 a whole, the original larva from which the manifold variety 

 of organic nature has evolved itself. But as things now 

 exist in nature we have in species only separate fragments of 

 the whole, which have separated themselves more and more 

 from the original — fragments, moreover, which are regarded at 

 a particular stage in a continuous evolution the end of which 

 cannot be seen. For if Ave accurately examine into the 

 meaning of the propositions which I have established, we 

 shall find that it follows from them that in a wdiole complete 

 evolutionary series the succeeding must always be the more 

 highly evolved, the preceding always the more lowly evolved 

 — as it were, the larva of the succeeding. 



And when we take the whole series, we find that the most 

 highly evolved must pass through in its life, though in a 

 brief and condensed fashion, the evolution of the w^hole series; 

 the changes, to extend more generally the special case, passing 



