S DARWINISM AND EVOLUTION. 



" characters will be transmitted to one sex or to both sexes 

 "according to the form of inheritance which prevails." 



This, then, and nothing else, is Darwinism. 



" The thoughtless remark," says Prof. Fiske, " is sometimes 

 " heard, that the Darwinian theory rests upon purely gratuitous 

 "assumptions and can never be submitted to verification. On the 

 " contrary, the theory of natural selection, when analysed, will be 

 "found to consist of eleven propositions, of which nine are 

 " demonstrated truths, the tenth is a corollary from its nine 

 " predecessors, and the eleventh is a perfectly legitimate postulate." 



Let us enumerate these propositions : — ■ 



i. More organisms perish than survive. 



2. No two individuals are exactly alike. 



3. Individual peculiarities are transmissible to offspring. 



4. Individuals whose peculiarities bring them into closest 

 adaptation with their environment are those which survive and 

 transmit their peculiar organisations. 



5. The survival of the fittest thus tends to maintain an 

 equilibrium between organisms and their environments. 



6. But the environment of every group of organisms is steadily, 

 though slowly, changing. 



7. Every group of organisms must accordingly change in average 

 character, under penalty of extinction. 



8. Changes due to individual variations are complicated by the 

 law that a change set up in any one part of a highly complex and 

 coherent aggregate, like an organism, initiates changes in other 

 parts. 



9. They are further complicated by the law that structures are 

 nourished in proportion to their use. 



1 o. From the foregoing nine propositions, each one of which is 

 indisputably true, it is an inevitable corollary that changes thus set 

 up and complicated must eventually alter the specific character of 

 any given group of organisms. 



n. It is postulated, that, since the first appearance of life 

 upon the earth's surface, sufficient time has elapsed to have 

 enabled such causes as the foregoing to produce all the specific 

 heterogeneity now witnessed. 



As this is a very condensed and somewhat technical, though a 

 most cogent and logically constructed syllogism, it may be well to 

 give a few illustrations or explanations of each of the propositions. 



An organism is any living thing, or any independent aggregation 

 of living stuff, that possesses a visible structure. In some cases 

 the only structure that an organism can be said to possess is 

 a surface and an interior. 



Life is the continuous adjustment of the internal relations of an 

 organism to its environment or surroundings. 



