40 Editors’ Table. [ January, 
EDITORS FABLE. 
EDITORS: A. S. PACKARD, JR., AND E. D. COPE. 
The first and hasty conclusion of many people on the 
perusal of Darwin’s Origin of Species was, that the populations 
of the earth, including ourselves, are the food for the mills of 
unconscious and implacable forces, or at best are the sport of 
aimless chance. And so long as all evolution was supposed to 
be included in the two words “heredity and natural selection,” 
there was good ground for pessimism, and even despair. It is 
a fact that in the early stage of thought on this subject, teachers as 
well as scholars underrated the importance of the question of the 
origin of variation, or the “ origin of the fittest,” although it had 
been publicly discussed in France a third of a century earlier. 
The laws of mechanical evolution which are adduced to explain 
the “ origin of the fittest ;’ do they give any relief to anxious hu- 
manity from undiscriminating domination of “the God of Forces?” 
The very term, “ mechanical evolution,’ would seem to preclude l 
any opportunity for the element of personality either as author or 
director. The pessimist and the fatalist may still apparently 
claim the field. But the nature, and hence the origin, of “ the 
fittest,’ must be thoroughly understood before such judgment — 
can be pronounced on the order of things. 
With the advent of sensibility came pleasure and pain. Pes- 
simism is the belief in the reign of suffering. On the other 
hand hedonism believes, if not in the reign of pleasure, at least in 
the reign of the greatest happiness to the greatest number. Do- 
sensitive beings walk open-eyed into pain or pleasure once know, — 
without fear of one or anticipation of the other? Every one knows l 
to the contrary. Memory has been the teacher of the ages, 50 
that the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure has been 
the business of living things since the dawn of consciousness - 
and the existence of memory. It is more than probable that 
these prime movers of the universe have directed the mechanical 
forces into profitable channels, and have converted them to 
their use. More than this, mechanical evolution means he 
development of the machine that directs other machines, the 
brain, and the mind. Hence mechanical evolution is the evolu- | 
tion of intelligence. Of course the lessons of experience are nd 
part lessons of pain, and beings that cannot act in accordance 
