2O2 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART m 



partly in the assertion that (if not the existence 6f 

 life ; to take the same view on that point involves 

 a further stretch of the spirit of materialism; yet) 

 all advances in life are due to conditions resident in 

 the environment, operating outside and apart from 

 the purposeful processes of the living creature. To 

 say that "natural selection" causes this or that is 

 almost equivalent to saying that " casual co-existence " 

 creates this or that. One is tempted to take up the 

 very opposite position, and assign whatever is new in 

 evolution, even according to Darwin's own analysis, 

 to the varying organism, and not to the selecting 

 environment. " Natural selection " seems a fair 

 enough name for the evolutionary process (as con- 

 ceived by Darwin), so far as that to which it applies 

 can be regarded as one thing evolving continuously 

 throughout the process. Thus life may be said to 

 differentiate itself into new and finer forms "by 

 natural selection." But natural selection can do no 

 more. It cannot " explain " how matter should pass 

 into life, or how animality should evolve rationality. 

 If for any purpose, or from any point of view, we 

 have to emphasise novelty as novel, then it is un- 

 reasonable to speak of the evolutionary process which 

 led to it, even if Darwin's analysis of that process be 

 accepted, by the name of "natural selection." There 

 must have been possibilities in " protoplasm " answer- 

 ing to all the novel results of late evolution. Let the 

 variations come up as they may ; let them point in 

 every direction by turns, quite at random, if you insist 

 upon it ; still, apart from the amount or direction of 

 each individual congenital variation, there must be a 

 total possible range of variations, prescribed by the 



