36 DARWINISM TO-DAY. 



sharpness of claw or in agility. What of the chances for 

 such a necessary coincidence in the one individual of favour- 

 able variations in all the ways necessary to create a real life- 

 or-death-determining advantage? The law of probabilities 

 answers that much to the dismay of the Darwinian. But, 

 again, why not compare the chances in the struggle of two 

 individuals not standing side by side in a variational series, 

 but at two extremes of the range ; the difference here can be 

 considerable, can be of positive advantage or disadvantage. 

 Yes, but again comes the necessity of presupposing a coin- 

 cidence of other advantages or at least of no coincidence of 

 balancing advantages and disadvantages. But even more 

 fatal is the condition that if an extreme variation in some one 

 character could be of a life-preserving advantage, yet by the 

 law of probabilities (and by the tale of actual observation) 

 those individuals standing at the extremes of the range of 

 variation are very, very few compared with those standing 

 nearer the mean, or mode, of the series, and there would 

 be almost a certainty of such an extreme-charactered sur- 

 vivor not finding a similar form with which to mate and thus 

 insure perpetuation of the advantage, the mating of the 

 individuals admittedly not depending on any necessary 

 similarity in variation (unless the varying characteristics 

 happen to be actually concerned with the mating act: see 

 later discussion of biological isolation, chapter ix). Con- 

 siderable variations, the only ones of apparent worth in a 

 life-and-death struggle, are in such meagre disproportion 

 to the less considerable that they are inevitably swamped, 

 extinguished, in miscellaneous cross-mating. 



Let us consider a little more in detail each of the various 



objections mentioned in the last few pages. Only the student 



of systematic (classificatory) zoology or botany 



Insignificance * /. .,. 



of fluctuating can realise how slight and insignificant are the 

 variations, various miscellaneous individual variations 

 which make up that basis of ever-present, myriad-faced, 



