Principles of western civilisation

58 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

qualities of two distinct individuals, and thereby to secure the advantage to be obtained from the ceaseless mixing together of the individual tendencies to variation of a whole species, was an end which could only be accomplished in one way. In every new life it became necessary for nature to return to the original starting-point, namely, the single cell. For it was at this stage, and here only, that the combination in the new individual of the hereditary qualities of both parents could be accomplished.* We perceive, therefore, how a great number of phenomena, affecting, on the one hand, the character of the single cells which form the starting-point, and, on the other hand, the character of the adult individuals,— phenomena for which the most far-fetched and fantastic explanations have been sought by inquirers,—have no other meaning than the simple one that they have been adaptations acquired under the influence of Natural Selection for the purpose of effecting this fundamental necessity to which life had been rendered subject. The principle of utility which lay behind the higher processes of reproduction—utility to the generations always in the future—has been, in short, the sole end which has silently controlled an immense range of modifications in character, function, and form, which we see in progress in all directions as development has continued upwards. As the process has reached the higher forms of life it is the same principle—the subordination of the present in the interests of the future—which is to be observed working itself out at closer distance, and in simpler form. On the one hand, we have the ever-

1 Essays, by A. Weismann, vol. i. pp. 152, 153.

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