Principles of western civilisation

ra PROJECTED EFFICIENCY 39

the development which has taken place in the conception since it left Darwin’s hands.

Any one who has kept in touch with the work which down to the present time has been done, in England, Germany, and America, in slowly organising the evidence upon which the evolutionary view rests, will be conscious of a peculiar extension which has been taking place in the conception of the law of Natural Selection. Like nearly all important departures, the change has been effected gradually and under a number of phases, so that many of those who are well acquainted with the details of knowledge, which under one or more heads have contributed to it, have remained unconscious of the character and significance of the process of movement as a whole.

At the present day any close student of the Origin of Species can hardly rise from the study of that book without having left on his mind at least one clear and definite impression. He will in all probability feel, over and above everything else, how steadily and consistently Darwin kept before him the vision of the keen, long-drawn-out, and never-relaxed struggle in which every form of life is of necessity engaged; and the conception of the dominating importance of every feature and quality contributing to success and survival in this supreme rivalry.

Now, keeping this in mind, there is a point of great interest which it is of importance to notice. It will be observed, if we follow closely the argument developed in the Ovigin of Species, that those profitable features and qualities which Darwin had before his mind, and which he beheld ever accumu-