No. 602] THE SELECTION PROBLEM 



67 



longer questioned by any one who takes the trouble either 

 to think or to observe living things. It is a process which 

 goes on constantly and affects all organisms. In this 

 sense it is no more than the resultant of the observed 

 absence of individual, mundane immortality among living 

 things. The fact that individuals die implies that those 

 not yet dead are a selected lot, in at least one respect, 

 namely survival. 



This mere fact of elimination and survival is, how- 

 ever, not in itself particularly illuminating. The first 

 question before us is whether such a process is capable 

 of bringing about evolutionary changes of a progressive 

 sort. Obviously it is capable of doing so, in theory at 

 least, if we add two assumptions, or better rules accord- 

 ing to which the Dance of Death is to be performed. The 

 first of these rules is that the individuals alive at any 

 time shall be different from those dead, in some other 

 respects than that of survival merely. In other words, 

 the elimination shall be selective. The second rule is 

 that the survivors shall transmit to their progeny those 

 differences which mark them off from the eliminated. 

 The theory that these two rules are always and every- 

 where in operation, taken together with the observed fact 

 that living creatures do die, is the Darwinian theory of 

 natural selection as a factor in organic evolution. If the 

 premise be granted that the game of survival is in fact 

 played by these rules, the conclusion is then logically 

 irresistible that evolutionary progress is bound to occur 

 in the direction of those differences which distinguish the 

 survivors. 



Here many have been content to let the matter rest. In 

 the minds of an astonishingly large number of people, 

 which number includes some rather great names in the 

 world of science, it is precisely tli(^ same tliinu' to show 

 that something loiricnllv muM !)(> m.. it i^ t() >]u)\v t1int 

 it is so. If the fonnal ml. ^ m' :ur ^.nl^ii.^l. imtli 



seems to them to be thereby (-tnl.lisli,..!. fin-tlicr evi- 

 dence^ iv demanded. A- e\ery one knoxv^. tlii- attitude 

 M i)r;icticnl!y to the intellectual bankruptcy of the whole 



