600 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LI. No. 1329 



the parent type without derangement of this 

 harmony. I was unable to see that either 

 flower or fruit change within the observable 

 limits rendered its possessor either better or 

 less fitted to survive. Deviation from the 

 type appeared to have followed some innate 

 tendency and to have been possible in quite 

 different directions within rather wide limits 

 without rendering its possessor either more or 

 less fit to survive. Within such limits, the 

 changes of form seemed to have been free to 

 wander at wiU along a number of differen- 

 tiating paths. 



These plants apparently illustrate the sur- 

 vival of the equally fit, though unlike, rather 

 than of the fittest whether alike or dissimilar, 

 under the operation of Darwin's selective 

 process which would weed out promptly those 

 not really fit to meet the general conditions of 

 life, while permitting secondary differences to 

 appear and persist for a very long time. 



This is a rather self-evident presentation 

 of one of the physiologist's exasperating 

 troubles, the controlling existence of a har- 

 monious optimum as he calls it, in conform- 

 ity with which his cultures succeed best under 

 conditions that sometimes differ annoyingly 

 from those that he has reason to believe are 

 the optima for the individual functions that 

 he wishes to investigate experimentally one by 

 one. It recalls forcibly, though not parallel- 

 ing, the dominance of certain features in un- 

 skilfully made composite photographs. It 

 parallels the transformation of that peculiar 

 fiuiction, productive investigation, to the pro- 

 motion of which the society of the Sigma Xi 

 devotes its efforts. Conditions being collec- 

 tively favorable, many differences that appear, 

 whether fluctuating or mutant, represent vari- 

 ation rather than real evolution. 



Apt in aphorisms, Bailey once hit on the 

 expression survival of the unlike for that out- 

 come of natural selection or the survival of 

 the flttest to which the name evolution usually 

 is applied. It calls up the picture of a 

 changing or changed environment which elim- 

 inates the harmoniously fit of the past and 

 allows their successors of the present to fight 

 it out among themselves for the final per-. 



petuation or disappearance of individual idio- 

 syncrasies that they may have inherited or 

 acquired. 



The organic change may or may not be 

 abrupt because the change in environment 

 may or may not have been sudden: very com- 

 monly it appears to have been gradual. Its 

 product may or may not please us. Except 

 through the artificial selection that we applj' 

 in the broad field of agriculture, we have not 

 intentionally changed the controlling condi- 

 tions. The great response of organic nature 

 is not conformed to our wishes or ideals but 

 to that innate law of living matter that com- 

 pels it to perpetuate itself and the forms 

 through which it may best do this. The 

 product is as varied in effectiveness as in 

 form, but it tends to efficiency in peopling the 

 earth and in making use of by-products and 

 waste as well as of the raw materials offered 

 by inorganic nature. 



The lesson of organic evolution is at once 

 discouraging and hopeful : discouraging as 

 showing that the individual or the kind that 

 can not keep to the gait must fall out of the 

 procession; encouraging as showing that keep- 

 ing the pace is not necessarily keeping in 

 step ; and hopeful in that as the world of dead 

 matter changes, the world of living matter 

 effectively shifts its life processes and vital 

 machinery toward ultimate conformity to the 

 great opportunity that is its own for the 

 moment — a conformity which if perfect would 

 eliminate finally disharmonies, and realize a 

 perfect teleology of self-contained adaptation. 



Even inert matter is coming more and more 

 to evolutionary recognition, as its heavier 

 elements are found to be older and more com- 

 plex, their unaided combinations to tend into 

 an instable complexity that approaches the 

 surpassingly labile living matter, and their 

 dissociated particles to gather tlu-ough un- 

 measured space into solar systems perhaps all 

 at some time as capable of supporting life 

 as our own is known to be at present. The 

 greatest law of nature seems to be that of 

 spontaneous aggregation of matter into com- 

 plex forms and of the shaping of these into 

 efficient forms. 



