OBJECTIONS TO THE DARWINIAN THEORY 159 



difficulty ; for if the higher animals are descended 

 from more lowly constituted ancestors, as we believe, 

 and if these advances, these steps forward have 

 been preserved because they were improvements, 

 and because they gave advantage in the struggle for 

 existence, how is it that we find the lowly organised 

 forms still living alongside the higher and improved 

 ones ? 



The answer is that these lowly organised forms 

 occupy places which cannot be filled by the 

 higher forms ; as Wallace says : " There is no 

 motive power to destroy or seriously modify them, 

 and they have thus probably persisted, under slightly 

 varying forms, through all geologic time." Again, 

 if we compare human history, we see that advance 

 in civilisation does not involve the advance of all 

 the members. For instance, some shops become 

 larger and more pretentious, yet there are still 

 plenty of places where small shops can survive, 

 while there is no room for large ones. Again, 

 some nations still exist which use bows and 

 arrows, or slings and clubs, which are easily replaced 

 and more suitable for their purposes than more 

 modern implements of warfare. 



Degeneration, or Retrograde Development. 



It is very commonly assumed that, as in the 

 struggle for existence, the fittest survive ; therefore 

 each generation must be rather more highly or more 

 perfectly organised, and fitter to survive than the 

 preceding; and that in all cases there must be a 



