XI 

 THE ARRIVAL OF THE FIT 



IN my youth I once heard the then well-known 

 lecturer Starr King speak on "The Law of 

 Disorder." I have no recollection of the main 

 thought of his discourse, but can see that it might 

 have been upon the order and harmony that finally 

 come out of the disharmonies of nature and of man. 

 The whole universe goes blundering on, but surely 

 arrives. Collisions and dispersions in the heavens 

 above, and failure and destruction among living 

 things on the earth below, yet here we all are in a 

 world good to be in ! The proof that it is good to be 

 in is that we are actually here. It is as if the Creator 

 played his right hand against his left — what one 

 loses the other gains. 



It has been aptly said that while Darwin's theory 

 of natural selection may account for the survival of 

 the fittest, it does not account for the arrival of the 

 fittest. The arrival of the fittest, sooner or later, 

 seems in some way guaranteed by tendencies that 

 are beyond the hit-and-miss method of natural 

 selection. 



When we look back over the course of organic 

 evolution, we see the unfolding of a great drama, 

 or tragedy, in which, for millions upon millions of 



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