SELECTION 467 



Selection, which operates in relation to an external Systema 

 Natura?, the building-up of which is the work of aeons. As 

 organisms evolved there was a pari passu complexifying of 

 the web of life, and this extra-organismal registration worked 

 towards conservation and towards further advance. For it 

 is in relation to the external system that selection works. 



In the evolution of human societies much has always de- 

 pended on the external registration of ideas and ideals. They 

 form a framework of institutions and organisations, as stable 

 as folk-ways and traditions; they become immortal in litera- 

 ture and art; and this extra-organismal registration works 

 both towards conservation and towards further advance. For 

 it is in relation to the external system that selection works. 

 It may be urged, however, that the social system is often 

 unsound, that it may give fixed expression to the vicious 

 as well as to what is noble, and that the result is to help 

 degeneration not progressive evolution. The answer is sadly 

 familiar, that this does occur; and that nationalities and 

 their monuments alike are then swept from the stage. 



The difference in the realm of organisms is that we have 

 there to deal with an external system which is the product 

 of many millions of years, that the disintegrative elements 

 which entered into it have for inherent reasons failed to 

 stand the test of time. Like rotten stones in a building they 

 have crumbled away. But they have been replaced by others 

 more enduring. 



What we mean may be made clearer by a concrete instance. 

 It was probably in the Carboniferous age that various insects 

 became flower-visitors, that inter-relations began to be estab- 

 lished between insects and flowers, between flowers and in- 

 sects. The flowers evolving in their own way came to have 

 flower-visiting insects (likewise evolving) as part of their 



