LIFE THE TRAVELER 



in a profound calm. Life is a struggle always. Only 

 living things struggle; in the organic world alone 

 is there an activity that is an effort. There is ac- 

 tivity in all matter, visible and invisible activity, 

 the end of which is to reach an equilibrium. 



The key-word of evolution is organic effort, the 

 inherent impetus of life. No conjuring with merely 

 mechanical forces can, in my opinion, account for 

 the upward or aspiring tendency of organic nature. 

 Life struggled out of the fish into the reptile, and 

 out of the reptile into the bird, but left these forms 

 still flourishing behind it. According to natural 

 selection these unfit forms ought all to have gone 

 out. The fish is as fit to survive as the reptile, and 

 the reptile as fit as the bird and the mammal, and 

 the mammal as fit as man; the invertebrate as fit 

 as the vertebrate. The individuals of these species 

 that do not survive are cut off by accident largely, 

 then by reason of low vitality, or a scant measure 

 of life. The competition with other living forms 

 plays only a secondary part. I fancy that all the 

 animals of any and every kind that are well born, 

 that is, with a normal life - endowment, thrive 

 equally well and survive equally well, except so far 

 as accident enters into the problem. If food is 

 scarce, they go hungry together, until those en- 

 feebled by age and other things are eliminated. 



The variations which lead up to the formation 

 of a new species are so insensible, they stretch over 



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