LIFE THE TRAVELER 



up, does not appear. Natural selection has shown 

 great partiality. Weismann admits that "these 

 primitive forms were in a certain sense predestined 

 to development." The traveler was predestined to 

 get out of the woods and reach his goal, but only in 

 case he had a goal, and knew in what direction it lay. 



Does not the plasticity of living forms, their power 

 of adaptation, their capacity to profit by fortuitous 

 circumstances, imply something super-mechanical 

 and super-chemical that natural selection could 

 neither give nor take away? 



Behold an army on a forced march; see the weak 

 and incompetent fall out and drop by the wayside. 

 That is natural selection, the survival of the fittest; 

 only the strongest and the least handicapped reach 

 the goal. The only positive things are the plans 

 of the commanding general and the impulse that 

 sends the troops forward. Darwin himself never 

 looked upon natural selection as a cause, or in any 

 sense a directing agent, but as a name for a process 

 — a sifting process that led to the survival of the 

 most fit. Darwinism makes no account of the evo- 

 lutionary impulse — the constant push of life that 

 lies back of, and makes possible, this drama of 

 creation. Development implies an inward tend- 

 ency to development, something that profits by 

 development. The myriad of living forms could 

 only arrive under the pressure of an organizing tend- 

 ency in living matter. Natural selection may trim 



267 



