Principles of western civilisation

48 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

the short-lived generations.’ From actual examples the conclusion was enforced that it was this need of the species, and not simply molecular peculiarity unchangeably inherent in life, which must be held to be the cause controlling and dominating, at least within wide limits, the conflicting facts from which previous observers had endeavoured to construct their theories. To serve the needs of the species, and not the interest of the individual, it was held that the duration of life had been greatly lengthened out in a number of cases to which it was possible to point. In other cases, and even in nearly allied species, the duration of life had been shortened to a remarkable degree ; and here again obviously under the influence of the same cause of Natural Selection operating towards ends to which ‘‘the length and breadth of life in the individual” were quite subordinate.

In this remarkable essay—the first of a series of memoirs the important bearing of which on the tendencies of Western thought is only beginning to be fully understood, and the general meaning of which has been in the past in some degree obscured by the technicalities of the controversies to which it has given rise—the nature of the central idea which carries us beyond Darwin's stand-point is already apparent. We begin to see that in so ultimate and fundamental a matter as the average duration of life in the individual, the determining and controlling end, towards which Natural Selection has operated,

1 Reading the essay closely now, we see how much farther Professor Weismann’s views carry us than even the author appeared to be conscious of at the time. He apparently contemplated the advantage to the species from the shortening of the term of duration of life in the individual to be related to the number of offspring produced. The utility associated with the widened basis for variation may be said to be included in this, but the subject was not developed towards the conclusions which we now see to be inherent in it.