LIFE THE TRAVELER 



doublings are, in a measure, accidental. But it ends 

 as it began, a stream of water and only that. But 

 the stream of life begins in definite forms, and, as it 

 flows on, changes perpetually and increasingly into 

 higher and more complex forms. Its physics and 

 chemistry are the same as that of the stream of non- 

 living bodies, its elements are the same, but changes 

 and transformations take place of which non-living 

 forms know nothing. Of course the fortuitous plays 

 a part in the course of the living as in that of the 

 non-living, but it plays an entirely secondary part. 

 The seeds that fall upon rocky or barren places do 

 not sprout, and they fall where the chance winds or 

 floods drop them. 



We may never be able to make a logical statement 

 about this something here hinted at, but that there 

 is no controlling purpose in organic nature, that the 

 eye, the heart, the brain of man, are mere molecular 

 accidents, like a profile in the rocks, or a face in the 

 clouds, is unthinkable. Natural selection does not 

 work on dead things, and it does not beget life, and 

 in the origin of species it can play only a secondary 

 part. As has been said, it may, in a measm-e, ac- 

 count for the survival of the fittest, but not for the 

 arrival of the fittest. 



Natural selection is only a name for a weeding-out 

 or eliminating process, and were it not for the inher- 

 ent tendency to development which organisms pos- 

 sess, coupled with the variations tliat result from 



265 



