INTERPRETATION AND QUALIFICATION. 499 



to special facts, we have found that this inverse variation is 

 clearly traceable throughout both the animal and vegetal 

 kingdoms. We may therefore set it down as a law, that 

 every higher degree of organic evolution, has for its concomi- 

 tant a lower degree of that peculiar organic dissolution which 

 is seen in the production of new organisms. 



§ 363. Something remains to be said in reply to the in- 

 quiry — how is the ratio between Individuation and Genesis 

 established in each case ? This inquiry has been but partially 

 answered in the course of the foregoing argument. 



Many specialities of the reproductive process are mani- 

 festly due to the natural selection of favourable variations. 

 Whether a creature lays a few large eggs or many small ones 

 equal in weight to the few large, is not determined by any 

 physiological necessity : here the only assignable cause is the 

 survival of varieties in which the matter devoted to repro- 

 duction happens to be divided into portions of such size and 

 number as most to favour multiplication. Whether in any 

 case there are frequent small broods or larger broods at 

 longer intervals, depends wholly on the constitutional pecu- 

 liarity that has arisen from the dying out of families in 

 which the sizes and intervals of the broods were least suited 

 to the conditions of life. Whether a species of animal pro- 

 duces many offspring of which it takes no care or a few of 

 which it takes much care — that is, whether its reproductive 

 surplus is laid out wholly in germs or partly in germs and 

 partly in labour on their behalf — must have been decided by 

 that moulding of constitution to conditions slowly effected 

 through the more frequent preservation of descendants from 

 those whose reproductive habits were best adapted to the 

 circumstances of the species. Given a certain surplus avail- 

 able for race-preservation, and it is clear that by indirect 

 equilibration only, can there be established the more or 

 less peculiar distribution of this surplus which we see in 

 each case. Obviously, too, survival of the fittest 



