'464 THE BIOC08MOS HISTORICAL. 



ating individuals, organically and inorgani- 

 cally; this must be deemed its primordial 

 trait. Darwin, of course, does not call up 

 such remote outlooks, he rather shuns them, 

 while Aristotle for instance, as philosopher, 

 seeks them as indicating Nature's universal 

 relation, that is, its relation to the Universe. 

 The Darwinian round may be briefly con- 

 ceived as follows: (1) The given variation of 

 organisms; this on the whole is taken for 

 granted by Darwin as his starting point. To 

 be sure there is implied even here that such 

 variation takes place through birth; every 

 born individual is different from all others. 



(2) The struggle for existence between these 

 varying individuals of the same species; the 

 fittest survive in the battle for food primarily. 



(3) The propagation of the fittest organism 

 after getting rid of the unfit. But the progeny 

 of this fittest organism is again composed of 

 the fit and the unfit, and so the struggle be- 

 gins over again, or rather it never stops. 

 Evidently the generative act of the individual 

 which keeps reproducing variation with its 

 two main classes, the fit and the unfit, is the 

 pivotal act of the whole process, upon which 

 many problems turn. Can generation be so 

 controlled that it will lessen or eliminate the 

 unfit? In the lower organisms, the plant and 

 animal, this has long been done by the im- 



