LIFE THE TRAVELER 
up. does not appear. Natural selection has shown 
great partiality. Weismann admits that “these 
primitive forms were in a certain sense predestined 
to development.” The traveler was predestined to 
get out of the woods and reach his goal, but only in 
case he had a goal, and knew in what direction it lay. 
Does not the plasticity of living forms, their power 
of adaptation, their capacity to profit by fortuitous 
circumstances, imply something super-mechanical 
and super-chemical that natural selection could 
neither give nor take away? 
Behold an army on a forced march; see the weak 
and incompetent fall out and drop by the wayside. 
That is natural selection, the survival of the fittest; 
only the strongest and the least handicapped reach 
the goal. The only positive things are the plans 
of the commanding general and the impulse that 
sends the troops forward. Darwin himself never 
looked upon natural selection as a cause, or in any 
sense a directing agent, but as a name for a process 
—a sifting process that led to the survival of the 
most fit. Darwinism makes no account of the evo- 
lutionary impulse — the constant push of life that 
lies back of, and makes possible, this drama of 
creation. Development implies an inward tend- 
ency to development, something that profits by 
development. The myriad of living forms could 
only arrive under the pressure of an organizing tend- 
ency in living matter. Natural selection may trim 
267 
