February 11, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



209 



pose? It could only be said to have pur- 

 posely arisen because it was conscious of a 

 man in its vicinity that would protect it, 

 which is sheer nonsense to most of us. 

 This would mean from Bergson's point of 

 view that cows began to give more milk 

 under domestication because the "elan 

 vital" of the cow made a sacrificial offer- 

 ing- to man on the altar of their common 

 interests; that hens laid more eggs on the 

 same altar and that the fancy races of fat 

 pigs have arisen from disintei-ested or un- 

 sophisticated motives so far as the creative 

 principle in the pig is concerned. 



But after a new variation had arisen we 

 may speak of piirpose as a directive agent 

 in the formation of domesticated races, in 

 the sense that man supplied the purpose 

 when he selected the new variation. The 

 next step was again due to a further ac- 

 tion of the environment, but the direction 

 of that action was to some extent preju- 

 diced by what had already taken place. 

 Usefulness to man was the direction in 

 which new variations Avere made more 

 probable. 



Let us see how by adjusting this scheme 

 to nature our alternative of chance or 

 purpose fares. As before, we assume a 

 first variation arises through external fac- 

 tors. If it finds a suitable place it sur- 

 vives. Here there is no purpose unless in 

 the far-fetched sense that finding the ex- 

 ternal world suited to itself "is a pur- 

 pose"; rather is the result due to chance. 

 But there is another side to the question 

 from the Darwinian point of view; for, 

 while it is admitted that chance may in 

 some cases have to do with survival as just 

 defined, yet survival is due on the whole 

 more often to competition; when the race 

 is to the swift and the battle to the strong. 

 It is for a purpose that an organism 

 crowds out its competitors, for the pur- 

 pose of survival— not conscious purpose. 



perhaps, but in a difl'erent sense the re- 

 sult is purposeful. So I think by a shift- 

 ing of the angle of vision one might come 

 to look upon survival in nature as pur- 

 poseful in the same sense in which that 

 term is applied to artificial selection. By 

 this substitution the old and familiar 

 phrase, purpose, might still be applied in 

 a perverted sense to the theory of natural 

 selection, and possibly the popular exten- 

 sion of the theory may have been in part 

 due to the easy psychological transition 

 thus afforded. 



But does this conception of the evolu- 

 tion of adaptation accord with our experi- 

 ence ? Is the battle always to the brave— 

 for the brave is sometimes stupid— or the 

 race to the swift, rather than to the more 

 cunning? Have we here a true picture of 

 the evolution of adaptation? 



An individual advantage in one partic- 

 ular need not count much in survival when 

 the life of the individual depends on so 

 many thing-s- advantages in one direction 

 may be accompanied by failures in others, 

 chance cancels chance. Take, for example, 

 the human race, the conditions of which 

 we know perhaps better than those of any 

 other. An individual may be highly 

 gifted in one direction compared with his 

 fellows. He may win a Marathon, or have 

 more intelligence; he may have a better 

 physique, or a more perfect digestion; but 

 he does not therefore necessarily leave 

 more descendants even if his advantages 

 bring material and social rewards. There 

 are no records, so far as I know, to show 

 that we can trace back to only a single pair 

 of superior individuals any prepondera- 

 ting number of individuals of succeeding 

 generations; often the reverse is observed, 

 for the more highly gifted often have 

 fewer offspring. It seems to me that what 

 we know is at variance with the widely 

 accepted interpretation that the individual 



