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remarks must be added to what has been already said.



It might be said, paradoxically, that the worst fate that could befall

this hypothesis would be to be proved, for then it would be most certainly

refuted. What we mean is this: If it is really "utility" that rules the

world and things, there can be no certainty and objectivity of knowledge,

no guarantee of truth. The "struggle for existence" is not concerned with

selecting beings who see the world as it is. It selects only the

interpretation and conception of the environment that is most serviceable

for the existence and maintenance of the species. But there is nothing to

guarantee that the "true" knowledge will also be the most useful. It might

quite well be that an entirely subjective and in itself wholly false

interpretation would be the most serviceable. And if, by some

extraordinary chance, the selected interpretation should be also the true

one, there would be no means of establishing the fact. And what is true of

this interpretation is true also of all theories that are derived from it,

for example of the theory of selection itself.



Furthermore, a great part, perhaps the greatest part of the confidence

placed in the theory of selection is due to an involuntary, but entirely

fallacious habit of crediting it with the probabilities in favour of the

doctrine of descent. The main arguments in favour of evolution and descent

are very often, though unwittingly, adduced in support of Darwinism in

particular. This is a great mistake. Take, for instance, the evidence of

the "palaeontological" record. It affords hundreds of proofs of evolution,

but not a single proof of selection. Its "intermediate" and "connecting

links" do possibly prove the affiliation of species and the validity of

genealogical trees. But precisely the "intermediate links" which

selection requires--the myriads of forms of life which were not

successfully adapted, the unfit competitors in the struggle for existence

which must have accompanied the favourably adapted variants from step to

step, from generation to generation--these are altogether awanting.



Another circumstance seems to us to have been entirely overlooked, and it

is one which gives the theory of selection an inevitable appearance of

truth, even if it is essentially false, and thus makes it very difficult

to refute. Assuming that the recognition of teleological factors is valid,

that there is an inward law of development, that "Moses" or whoever one

will was undoubtedly right, it is self-evident that, because of the

indubitable over-production of organisms, there would even then be a

struggle for existence on an immense scale, and that it would have a

far-reaching "selective" influence, because of the relative plasticity of

many forms of life. Beyond doubt it would, in the course of aeons, have

applied its shears to many forms of life, and probably there would be no

organisms, organs, or associations in the evolution of the ultimate form

of which it had not energetically co-operated. Its influence would,

perhaps, be omnipresent, yet it might be far from being the all-sufficient

factor in evolution; indeed, as far as the actual impulse of evolution is

concerned, it might be a mere accessory. Unless we are to think of the

forms of life as wholly passive and wooden, the struggle for existence

must necessarily be operative, and the magnitude of its results, and their

striking and often bizarre outcome, will tend ever anew to conceal the

fact that the struggle is after all only an inevitable accompaniment of

evolution. And thus we understand how it is that interpretations from the

point of view of an inward law of development, of orthogenesis, or of

teleology, notwithstanding their inherent validity, have a priori always

had a relatively difficult position as compared with the Darwinian view.



It is usual to speak of the "all-sufficiency of natural selection," yet

the champion of the selection-theory admits, as he needs must, that the

struggle for existence and selection can of themselves create absolutely

nothing, no new character, no new or higher combination of the vital

elements; they can only take what is already given; they can only select

and eliminate among the wealth of what is offered.(38) And the offerer is

Life itself by virtue of its mysterious capacity for boundless and

inexhaustible variability, self-enrichment and increase. The "struggle for

existence" only digs the bed through which life's stream flows, draws the

guiding-line, and continually stimulates it to some fresh revelation of

its wealth. But this wealth was there from the beginning; it was, to use

the old word, "potential" in the living, and included with it in the

universal being from which life was called forth. The struggle for

existence is only the steel which strikes the spark from the flint; is,

with its infinite forms and components, only the incredibly complex

channel through which life forces its way upwards. If we keep this clearly

in mind, the alarming and ominous element in the theory shrinks to half

its dimensions.



And, finally, if we can rid ourselves of the peculiar fascination which

this theory exercises, we soon begin to discover what extraordinary

improbability and fundamental artificiality it implies. "Utility" is

maintained to be that which absolutely, almost tyrannically, determines

form and development in the realm of the living. Is this an idea that

finds any analogy elsewhere in nature? Those who uphold the theory most

strongly are wont to compare the development of organisms to

crystal-formation in order in some way to tack on the living to the

not-living. Crystal-formation, with its processes of movement and

form-development, is, they say, a kind of connecting link between the

living and the not-living. And in truth we find here, as in the realm of

life, species-formation, development into individuals, stages and systems.

But all this takes place without any hint of "struggle for existence," of

laboriously "selective" processes, or of ingenious accumulation of

"variations." The "species" of crystals are formed not according to

utility, but according to inherent, determining laws of development, to

which the diversity of their individual appearances is due. If "Life" were

only a higher potential of what is already stirring in crystallisation, as

this view suggests, then we should expect to find fixed tendencies,

determined from within, in accordance with which life would pass through

the cycle of its forms and possibilities, and rise spontaneously through

gradual stages.