THE ARRIVAL OF THE FIT 



years the sole actors are low and all but brainless 

 forms of life, devouring and devoured, in the old 

 seas. We see, during other millions upon millions of 

 years, a savage carnival of huge bestial forms upon 

 the land, amphibian monsters and dragons of the 

 land and air, devouring and being devoured, a riot 

 of blood and carnage. We see the shifting of land 

 and sea, the folding and crumpling of the earth's 

 crust, the rise of mountains, the engulfing of forests, 

 a vast destruction of life, immense numbers of ani- 

 mal forms becoming extinct through inability to 

 adapt themselves to new conditions, or from other 

 causes. We see creatures, half beast, half bird, or 

 half dragon, half fish; we see the evolutionary pro- 

 cess thwarted or delayed apparently by the harden- 

 ing or fixing of its own forms. We see it groping its 

 way like a blind man, and experimenting with this 

 device and with that, fumbling, awkward, ineffec- 

 tual, trying magnitude of body and physical strength 

 first, and then shifting the emphasis to size of brain 

 and delicacy and complexity of nerve-organization, 

 pushing on but gropingly, learning only by experi- 

 ence, regardless of pain and waste and suffering; 

 whole races of sentient beings swept away by some 

 terrestrial cataclysm, as at the end of Palaeozoic and 

 Mesozoic times; prodigal, inhuman, riotous, arming 

 some vegetable growths with spurs and thorns that 

 tear and stab, some insects with stings, some ser- 

 pents with deadly fangs, the production of pain as 



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