BRAIN v. MUSCLE IN NATURE = 177 
animals which are, for the time being, best able to take 
care of themselves, best adapted to their environment. 
She pays no attention to potentialities. 
If any one were kind enough to leave me a legacy of 
4#1000—a most unlikely contingency—I should be 
deeply grateful, and think all manner of good things 
about that person; but if any one, in recognition of my 
services to mankind, were to leave to me, or my family, 
41,000,000, payable one million years hence, I should 
not say as much as “Thank you.” The present value 
of a cheque for £1,000,000 dated January Ist, 1,001,906, 
is zzZ. So is the present value of a baby’s brain. 
A tiger will not refrain from eating up a spotted deer 
because the latter, if spared, will develop into the 
cleverest spotted deer that ever gambolled in the jungle. 
Natural selection acts upon young and old alike ; but it 
is the young developing creatures upon which Nature 
comes down with so heavy a hand; probably not one in 
a thousand of these reach maturity, upon an average. 
It is obvious that a most brilliant young animal may 
easily prove no match for the “old hand” of only 
mediocre ability. Hence the shortness of the period of 
helplessness is the feature most conducive to the preser- 
vation of a species—not necessarily a short period of 
development, but a short period of helplessness. Hence, 
in the lower forms of animal life, the young hatch out 
as larvez, able to take care of themselves in the struggle 
for existence, or, if helpless, are protectively coloured to 
a marvellous degree. So long as Nature is hampered in 
this manner, so long as she is obliged to manufacture 
animals at express speed, she has no opportunity of 
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