458 Evolution and Modern Philosophy 
There is here a special remark to be made. As we have seen 
above, recent research has shown that natural selection or struggle 
for life is no explanation of variations. Hugo de Vries distinguishes 
between partial and embryonal variations, or between variations and 
mutations, only the last-named being heritable, and therefore of 
importance for the origin of new species. But the existence of 
variations is not only of interest for the problem of the origin 
of species ; it has also a more general interest. An individual does 
not lose its importance for knowledge, because its qualities are not 
heritable. On the contrary, in higher beings at least, individual 
peculiarities will become more and more independent objects of 
interest. Knowledge takes account of the biographies not only of 
species, but also of individuals: it seeks to find the law of develop- 
ment of the single individual’, As Leibniz said long ago, individuality 
consists in the law of the changes of a being: “La loi du change- 
ment fait Vindividualité de chaque substance.” Here is a world 
which is almost new for science, which till now has mainly occupied 
itself with general laws and forms. But these are ultimately only 
means to understand the individual phenomena, in whose nature 
and history a manifold of laws and forms always cooperate. The 
importance of this remark will appear in the sequel. 
V. 
To many people the Darwinian theory of natural selection or 
struggle for existence seemed to change the whole conception of life, 
and particularly all the conditions on which the validity of ethical 
ideas depends. If only that has persistence which can be adapted 
to a given condition, what will then be the fate of our ideals, of our 
standards of good and evil? Blind force seems to reign, and the 
only thing that counts seems to be the most heedless use of power. 
Darwinism, it was said, has proclaimed brutality. No other difference 
seems permanent save that between the sound, powerful and happy 
on the one side, the sick, feeble and unhappy on the other; and 
every attempt to alleviate this difference seems to lead to general 
enervation. Some of those who interpreted Darwinism in this manner 
felt an aesthetic delight in contemplating the heedlessness and energy 
of the great struggle for existence and anticipated the realisation of 
a higher human type as the outcome of it: so Nietzsche and his 
followers. Others recognising the same consequences in Darwinism 
1 The new science of Ecology occupies an intermediate position between the biography 
of species and the biography of individuals. Compare Congress of Arts and Science, 
St Louis, Vol. v. 1906 (the Reports of Drude and Robinson) and the work of my colleague, 
E, Warming. 
