TENTATIVE VARIATION WITH HEREDITY. 1 57 



of thus shaping his relations belongs to man. Civihzed man not only 

 changes his relations to the environment, but by agriculture and other 

 arts transforms the environment to suit his own needs. In all its 

 action inorganic matter is completely indifferent to the character of 

 the results, either within the mass that is acting or in things external 

 to it; but organic life is, throughout all its grades, striving to attain 

 an increasing power of race preservation under given conditions, 

 and, in its highest manifestation in man, it breaks largely away from 

 the ancient thraldom, and assumes an ever-increasing control of the 

 environment. 



6. Tlie Chief Method of Advance is Tentative Variation with Transmission 

 to Offspring of the Endowments of the Survivors. 



Throughout this whole struggle for ascendency the principal method 

 of advance is the sending forth of various tentative experiments in the 

 form of variously endowed individuals presenting many methods of 

 ■ dealing with the environment, each individual that survives having 

 some influence on the endowments of the next generation. This 

 law of the survival of the fittest applies to all from the lowest to the 

 highest; but the qualities that constitute fitness differ progressively. 

 In one stage, strength and such weapons as teeth and claws are of the 

 greatest importance ; in another stage, the degree of intelligence and 

 the power to produce artificial weapons is the test; and, in a still 

 higher stage, the power of social organization and the ethical ideals 

 that form the foundation for such organization become the supreme 

 necessity for survival. But throughout it is the same law of survival, 

 the survival of the fittest, the future continuance of those fitted to 

 continue. Though plants are without conscious purpose, we neces- 

 sarily regard their production of flowers and seed as anticipatory 

 action ; for the whole significance of the process is found in its helping 

 to secure continued propagation. 



To an observer at the equator, the sun rises and sets each twenty- 

 four hours, moving in a circle nearly perpendicular to the horizon, 

 while to an observer at the North Pole the sun would rise and set but 

 once in a year, and in each twenty-four hours would move through a 

 complete circle nearly parallel to the horizon, traveling, as conven- 

 tional language would say, from left to right ; and to an observer at 

 the South Pole, the same sun would rise and set but once in a year^ 

 and would circle in the reverse direction, that is, from right to left. 

 Now, in such a case as this, we do not say that the cosmic process is 

 changed. So also, in the case of ethical man, I would not say, as Hux- 

 ley does, that his life is in opposition to the cosmic process, but rather 

 that he has attained to one of the higher stages of that process, in 

 which the meek are the ones who inherit the earth. 



