THE FACTORS OP ORGANIC EVOLUTION. 119 



portance, for the time being, than most of the other 

 attributes. If those members of the species which 

 have but ordinary shares of it, nevertheless survive by 

 virtue of other superiorities which they severally 

 possess, then it is not easy to see how this particular 

 attribute can be developed by natural selection in 

 subsequent generations." (For if some other superi- 

 ority is a greater source of luck, then natural selection, 

 or survival of the luckiest, will ensure that this other 

 superiority be preserved at the expense of the one 

 acquired in the earlier generation). " The probability 

 seems rather to be, that by gamogenesis, this extra 

 endowment will, on the average, be diminished in pos- 

 terity — just serving in the long run to compensate 

 the deficient endowments of other individuals, whose 

 special powers lie in other directions ; and so to keep 

 up the normal structure of the species. The working 

 out of the process is here somewhat difficult to follow " 

 (there is no difficulty as soon as it is perceived that 

 Mr. Darwin's natural selection invariably means, or 

 ought to mean, the survival of the luckiest, and that 

 seasons and what they bring with them, though fairly 

 constant on an average, yet individually vary so 

 greatly that what is luck in one season is disaster in 

 another); "but it appears to me that as fast as the 

 number of bodily and mental faculties increases, and 

 as fast as the maintenance of life comes to depend less 

 on the amount of any one, and more on the combined 

 action of all, so fast does the production of speciaKties 

 of character by natural selection alone become difficult. 

 Particularly does this seem to be so with a species so 



