382 The Morality of Nature 



does develop in advance many things in preparation for 

 coming needs. The warm blooded animal grows fur, and 

 stores nutriment, as winter approaches. The embryo in the 

 egg, and the parent producing the egg, show certain transi- 

 tional activities anticipating others to come. But these are 

 all repetitions of things which have been done before. This 

 is redevelopment of a formerly established course of be- 

 havior, now being repeated to suit circumstances which are 

 repeating. But in evolution we are specially limiting refer- 

 ence, to that which produces new things, new actions, and 

 new forms. Some of them suit new conditions ; but it is as 

 surely true that some of them do not, and this is the 

 ground for supposing that these are produced without fore- 

 sight or any anticipatory value. All these variations are as 

 results of the past; all are affected by the present; some 

 will be valuable in the future; but the present value is the 

 standard by which it is decided which variations are to be 

 added to the heredity and which abandoned. Never is a 

 new thing biologically adopted in the face of present disad- 

 vantage, because of a possible future benefit. The possi- 

 bility of the future is never so great a factor, as the cer- 

 tainty of the present; or the still greater certainty of the 

 past. Even the facility for variability, which seems to pre- 

 vail in certain species, as a provision for a frequently chang- 

 ing environment, is not anticipation, but is obviously a 

 product of the frequently changing past. In brief, the new 

 results of biological evolution are produced by past and 

 present life and environment, and not by prescience of the 

 future. 



This is so invariably true of life not self-conscious, that 



