The Fitness of the Environment 



BY LAWRENCE J. HENDERSON 



Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry in Harvard University 

 Cloth, i2tno t $1.50 net 



" Darwinian fitness is compounded of a mutual relation- 

 ship between the organism and the environment. Of this, 

 fitness of environment is quite as essential a component as 

 the fitness which arises in the process of organic evolution; 

 and in fundamental characteristics the actual environment is 

 the fittest possible abode of life." Such is the thesis which 

 this work seeks to establish through discussions of the physi- 

 cal and chemical characteristics of life and cosmogony, and 

 through critical study of the properties of matter in their 

 biological relations. 



Water and carbonic acid are shown to be the primary con- 

 stituents of the environment. Analysis shows their proper- 

 ties, together with those of the component elements, hydrogen, 

 oxygen, and carbon, to make up a series of maxima, among 

 all known compounds and elements, so numerous, so varied, 

 and so highly favorable, to the organic mechanism that the 

 fitness of the world for life assumes an importance not less 

 than the fitness which has been won by adaptation in the 

 course of organic evolution. 



A final chapter discusses the bearing of these conclusions 

 upon theories of organic evolution, modern vitalism, includ- 

 ing the views of M. Bergson, and the old natural theology, 

 and seeks to harmonize implications of design with the 

 mechanistic view of nature. 



" The author's style is so simple and clear that the volume combines 

 the entertaining advantages of a novel with the instructiveness and 

 vigor of a thoroughly scientific text." American Journal of Science. 



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