222 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



external agency; it will immediately set power a 

 little ahead of desire. On this the individual will eat 

 as much as it can — thus learning fro iomto to be able 

 to eat more, and to want more under ordinary circum- 

 stances — and will also breed rapidly up to the balance 

 of the abundance. This is the work of the agencies 

 incorporate in the organism, and will bring desire 

 level with power again. Famine, on the other hand, 

 puts desire ahead of power, and the incorporate agencies 

 must either bring power up by resource and invention, 

 or must pull desire back by eating less, both as indi- 

 viduals, and as the race, that is to say, by breeding 

 less freely ; for breeding is an assimilation of outside 

 matter so closely akin to feeding, that it is only the 

 feeding of the race, as against that of the individual. 



I do not think the reader will find any clearer man- 

 ner of picturing to himself the development of organism 

 than by keeping the normal growth of wealth con- 

 tinually in his mind. He will find few of the pheno- 

 mena of organic development which have not their 

 counterpart in the acquisition of wealth. Thus a too 

 sudden acquisition, owing to accidental and external 

 circumstances and due to no internal source of energy, 

 will be commonly lost in the next few generations. So 

 a sudden spoii due to a lucky accident of soil will not 

 generally be perpetuated if the offspring plant be 

 restored to its normal soil. Again, if the advance in 

 power carry power suddenly far beyond any past desire, 

 or be far greater than any past-remembered advance of 

 power beyond desire — ^then desire will not come up 

 level easily, but only with difficulty and all manner of 



