ON THE VITALISTIC VIEW OF NATURE. 413 



ally designed. In fact, they only exist because those 

 numberless individuals which could not grow in a suffi- 

 cient degree perished in the struggle. Only those in- 

 dividual specimens survived in whom, in one or a few 

 directions, something specially excellent was produced 

 at the expense of development in other directions. In 

 the mass, the crowd are sacrificed i.e., automatically 

 crushed, in favour of the few : in the individual, one 

 special growth is automatically pursued at the expense 

 of a general but less enduring i.e., self-assertive de- 

 velopment. The end the seeming purpose is pro- 

 duced in the process of production, it being merely 

 something more enduring i.e., something better. It 

 conveys the impression to an outside beholder of having 

 been consciously set at the term of the process of devel- 

 opment ; in reality it was produced simultaneously. The 

 mountain peak which towers above its neighbours, and 

 gives a distinctive rounding off and finish to a landscape, 

 may be conceived as having been built up by the selective 

 action of the natural artist who brought together the best 

 materials and placed them in their most enduring posi- 

 tions : in reality it owes its existence only to one out of 

 the numberless throes of nature which happened to take 

 place with stronger materials and in more stable forms 

 of arrangement and grouping, or it is due to the denuda- 

 tion of the strata surrounding it. The end and purpose 27. 



" Natural 



of any natural development is that which it can itself "l^st 

 automatically produce and endow with most distinctive "P ur pose. 

 and enduring characters, for this only survives at the 

 expense of weaker productions : there is a natural result 

 in development, but there need not be a purpose. The 



