SELECTION: ORGANIC AND SOCIAL 187 



directs. He directs by bringing similars together 

 and by eliminating undesirables from the flock 

 or herd. So Nature directs — but automatically 

 ' — by singling and sifting in the struggle for 

 existence. 



The Theory Stated. — (1) Darwin started with 

 the fountain of change within the living creature, 

 whence variations are always welling forth. Off- 

 spring are not quite like their parents, or like one 

 another. It is a fact that there are individual 

 variations, for better and for worse, between living 

 creatures of the same kind. In some cases it is 

 definitely known that these variations may be 

 transmitted. 



(2) Life is very proUfic, and in every kind of 

 living creature — except man — the majority die 

 young. There is not usually any increase in 

 numbers from generation to generation. There 

 is a ceaseless struggle for existence — a phrase to 

 be taken in a wide and metaphorical sense as a 

 description of what goes on in nature because of 

 the limits of space and the self-assertiveness of the 

 individual, because of the proUfic multiplication 

 of the eaters and the insufficiently rapid supply of 

 the eatable, because of the changeful and merciless 

 physical environment, and all the subtle interrela- 

 tions of things in the web of life, whose warp and 

 woof are love and hunger. 



It is very important to realise the web of life 

 in this connection, for, as an acute critic points out, 

 it alone warrants us in beUeving that " slight 

 differences may give one creature an advantage 

 over its neighbour in a nicely balanced struggle for 

 life. In other words, it introduces the conception 

 of a correlation between even minute variations and 



