332 THE RECAPITULATION THEORY 



confined to the common frog, the most likely form 

 to be studied, we should in all probability have 

 been led to wrong conclusions concerning the 

 ancestral condition of the blood-vessels in a point 

 of considerable importance. 



t A matter which at present is attracting much 



attention is the question of degeneration. Natural 

 selection, though consistent with and capable of 

 leading to steady upward progress and improve- 

 ment, by no means involves such progress as a 

 necessary consequence. All it says is that those 

 animals will, in each generation, have the best 

 chance of survival which are most in harmony 

 with their environment, and such animals will not 

 'necessarily be those which are ideally the best or 

 most perfect. 



If you go into a shop to purchase an umbrella, 

 the one you select is by no means necessarily that 

 which most nearly approaches ideal perfection, but 

 the one which best hits off the mean between your 

 idea of what an umbrella should be and the amount 

 of money you are prepared to give for it : the one 

 in fact that is on the whole best suited to the 

 circumstances of the case or the environment for 

 the time being. It might well happen that you 

 had a violent antipathy to a crooked handle, or else 

 were determined to have a catch of a particular 

 kind to secure the ribs, and this might lead to 

 the selection i.e., the survival of an article that 

 in other and even in more important respects was 

 manifestly inferior to the average. 



So is it also with animals : the survival of a 



