LIFE THE TRAVELER 
of life, yet the variations could not be initiated in 
a non-growing, a non-vital, a non-developing body. 
Darwin had a vision of spontaneously varying 
organisms, the form their variations should take 
determined by outward conditions, or contingent 
upon them, but the inward push and plasticity of 
life is implied in his theories. He saw a world of 
living forms arise and people the earth under the 
action of natural selection, but natural selection 
working on an ever-growing, expanding, irrepress- 
ible, self-renewing vital impulse. Natural selec- 
tion can do nothing without variation, and varia- 
tion springs from an inherent tendency to vary. 
Outward conditions determine in the same way 
the course and the form that water from a foun- 
tain shall assume, but it plays no part in the push- 
ing and flowing properties of the water itself. Dar- 
win took pains to say that “there is no innate or 
necessary tendency in each being to its own ad- 
vancement in the scale of organization,” but is not 
the innate tendency to vary the first step in this 
advancement? 
None of man’s ways throw light on Nature’s 
ways. Man works to specific or partial ends. Na- 
ture works to universal ends. Artificial selection 
throws no light on natural selection, because man 
singles out one or more forms and favors them 
against all others, whereas Nature favors all forms 
and multiplies her types endlessly. She has no 
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