ORGANIC EVOLUTION — THE FACTORS 85 



the favoured individuals to exterminate, in the struggle 

 for existence, all competitors in a single generation, 

 especially since ahnormaUties, because they imply a 

 wide departure from the specific type, are almost always 

 examples of retrogression, not of evolution, and therefore 

 a cause of elimination, not of survival. If we think of 

 any species of wild animal, it is difficult to believe that 

 any of its traits had their starting-points in abnormal- 

 ities which were afterwards accentuated, but easy to 

 believe that they had, practically speaking, no starting- 

 points, but were all within the potentialities of earliest 

 life when it differentiated from the non-living, and that 

 they arose through the gradual accumulation of normal 

 — that is, small — variations. How, for instance, did 

 the various modifications of epidermal tissue — scales, 

 hair, feathers, horns, nails, teeth, tushes, callosities — 

 arise ? Had they their origin in extraordinary abnorm- 

 alities, whereby an individual or a pair of individuals 

 suddenly developed scales, hair, feathers, &c., which 

 gave them such a great advantage in the struggle for 

 existence that they exterminated all competitors ? or did 

 they arise through a gradual process of evolution, during 

 which individuals, who on the whole varied favourably, 

 survived and left offspring, whereas individuals who on 

 the whole varied unfavourably, were eliminated and 

 left no offspring, and as a result scales, hair, feathers, 

 &c. were all evolved from the primitive epidermis, and 

 differences in degree became differences in kind ? 



Lord Salisbury cannot doubt, and I suppose no one 

 who has the knowledge of a school-boy doubts, that 

 great evolution has occurred in that species of animal 

 with which he is principally familiar — Man — and that 

 without the intervention of the breeder. Among the 

 races of men there are all sorts of differences : there are 

 white and black, copper-coloured and yellow, big and 

 small, bearded and beardless races, and so forth. Does he 



