XIV 



LIFE THE TRAVELER 



I 



WHEN I was a boy and studied astronomy 

 at school I thought of Kepler's radius vector 

 as a real thing that played an important part in 

 celestial mechanics. Later, in following Darwin's 

 theory of animal evolution, I found the same tend- 

 ency in myself and in others to objectify natural 

 selection and regard it as a positive agent or prin- 

 ciple that controlled and determined the origin of 

 species. 



Darwinians are prone to imply that Nature se- 

 lects as man selects, by positive interference. Even 

 so great a natural philosopher as Weismann speaks 

 of natural selection as a positive force. He says in so 

 many words that it " is the cause of a great part of 

 the physical evolution of organisms on the earth — 

 the guiding factor of evolution which creates what 

 is new out of the transmissible variations, by order- 

 ing and arranging them, selecting them in relation 

 to their number and size, as the architect does his 

 building stone, so that a particular style may result" \ 

 (The italics are mine.) Natural selection, then, ac- 

 cording to this ultra-Darwinian, is something that 



