Humanity in Limited Privilege 387 



and final, but all fitness is to be maintained in relation to 

 environment, which is itself liable to change. 



High organization is an equipment reached under certain 

 conditions, and prepared for such conditions, but if other 

 conditions ensue there must be prompt response in the pro- 

 duction of other organization. Only by this course of con- 

 tinued fitness is survival possible. 



It must be noted too that the consequences of fitness or 

 unfitness, are graduated in most wonderful way, to material- 

 ize the value of the activities of the individual considered as 

 a trustee of his race, and not as an isolated mortal. Fitness 

 inherited is an equipment granted at birth, the accumulation 

 of reward for ancestral right action. With this the indi- 

 vidual normally secures a term of life, conditioned only upon 

 a compliant, and almost automatic, obedience to the tradi- 

 tions and instincts of his kind. But mere submissive re- 

 sponse does not mean progress. If conditions remain favor- 

 able, such response may secure continued life in the position 

 and degree inherited. But if the conditions change then 

 some active adaptation is necessary, even to maintain the 

 inherited position in the scale. The lack of this activity 

 will induce or permit degeneracy, that is, the loss by atrophy 

 of organs no longer exercised, without the evolution of any 

 new ones to replace them. The activity thus demanded is 

 not necessarily self-conscious; the variation of lower life 

 may perhaps arise from conduct which we can call good; 

 it may arise as a consequence of that goodness, or it may 

 not ; but in either case its survival visibly rests in a selection, 

 by circumstances which premiate the adaptable forms, at 

 the expense of those not adaptable; and it must be recalled 



