Principles of western civilisation

rr PROJECTED EFFICIENCY 53

Natural Selection? Had it not behind it, in short, some principle of massive utility in the evolutionary process at the point at which it began to be encountered—a principle of utility the significance of which must have been projected altogether beyond the mere interest of the individual for the time being ?

The answer to this question is one of the most remarkable in biology. It may be considered, said Professor Weismann, in effect, that life came to be permanently endowed with a fixed duration in the individual—at the point at which we first encounter this phenomenon, amongst the multicellular formsunder the operation of the law of Natural Selection ; and because of the utility of such a phenomenon in the upward process of progress upon which life had entered.*

The direction in which the suggested principle of utility lay, we may now perceive even more clearly than did Professor Weismann at the time.” The phenomenon at the base of all the progress which life had made was that of variation; for it was this which supplied the raw material upon

1 Essays upon Heredity, vol. i., by August Weismann; Zhe Duration of Life ; Life and Death.

? While Professor Weismann saw from the outset that the tendency would be for the life of the individual, endowed with an indefinite term of duration, to be shortened by the amount which was useless to the species, he did not clearly connect the utility of short-lived generations with the greater opportunity allowed for variation. Two of the most suggestive passages were those in which it was pointed out that the operation of Natural Selection would be to reduce the life of the individual to a length which would afford the most favourable conditions for the existence of as large a number as possible of vigorous individuals at the same time, and that in which it was stated that “worn-out individuals are not only valueless to the species, but are even harmful, for they take the place of those which are sound.” Cf. Essays, vol. i., Duration of Life, pp. 24, 25; Life and Death, pp. 134-35, and 154-59; The Significance of Sexual Reproduction in the Theory of Natural Selection, pp. 284-85.