46 PROLEGOMENA 



but because the trail of the most ancient life remains 

 hidden, or has become obliterated. 



Thus that state of nature of the world of plants 

 which we began by considering, is far from possessing 

 the attribute of permanence. Rather its very essence 

 is impermanence. It may have lasted twenty or thirty 

 thousand years, it may last for twenty or thirty thou- 

 sand years more, without obvious change; but, as surely 

 as it has followed upon a very different state, so it will 

 be followed by an equally different condition. That 

 which endures is not one or another association of living 

 forms, but the process of which the cosmos is the 

 product, and of which these are among the transitory 

 expressions. And in the living world, one of the most 

 characteristic features of this cosmic process is the 

 struggle for existence, the competition of each with all, 

 the result of which is the selection, that is to say, the 

 survival of those forms which, on the whole, are best 

 adapted to the conditions which at any period obtain; 

 and which are, therefore, in that respect, and only in 

 that respect, the fittest. 3 The acme reached by the 

 cosmic process in the vegetation of the downs is seen in 

 the turf, with its weeds and gorse. Under the conditions, 

 they have come out of the struggle victorious; and, by 

 surviving, have proved that they are the fittest to sur- 

 vive. 



That the state of nature, at any time, is a temporary 

 phase of a process of incessant change, which has been 



3 That every theory of evolution must be consistent not merely 

 with progressive development, but with indefinite persistence in 

 the same condition and with retrogressive modification, is a point 

 which I have insisted upon repeatedly from the year 1862 till 

 now. See Collected Essays, vol. ii. pp. 461-89; vol. iii. p.. 33; 

 vol. viii, p. 304. In the address on "Geological Contemporaneity 

 and Persistent Types" (1862), the paleontological proofs of this 

 proposition were, I believe, first set forth. [T. H. H.] 



