188 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



goes to the wall. But the triumphant fraction again 

 breeds to over-production, transmitting the qualities which 

 secured its maintenance, but transmitting them in differ- 

 ent degrees. The struggle for food again supervenes, and 

 those to whom the favorable quality has been transmitted 

 in excess, will triumph as before. 



It is easy to see that we have here the addition of in- 

 crements favorable to the individual, still more rigorously 

 carried out than in the case of domestication; for not only 

 are unfavorable specimens not selected by nature, but they 

 are destroyed. This is what Mr. Darwin calls "Natural 

 Selection," which acts by the preservation and accumula- 

 tion of small inherited modifications, each profitable to 

 the preserved being. With this idea he interpenetrates 

 and leavens the vast store of facts that he and others have 

 collected. We cannot, without shutting our eyes through 

 fear or prejudice, fail to see that Darwin is here dealing, 

 not with imaginary, but with true causes; nor can we fail 

 to discern what vast modifications may be produced by 

 natural selection in periods sufiiciently long. Each indi- 

 vidual increment may resemble what mathematicians call 

 a ** differential" (a quantity indefinitely small); but definite 

 and great changes may obviously be produced by the 

 integration of these infinitesimal quantities, through prac- 

 tically infinite time. 



If Darwin, like Bruno, rejects the notion of creative 

 power, acting after human fashion, it certainly is not be- 

 cause he is unacquainted with the numberless exquisite 

 adaptations, on which this notion of a supernatural Artifi- 

 cer has been founded. His book is a repository of the 

 most startling facts of this description. Take the marvel- 

 lous observation which he cites from Dr. Kriiger, where 



