Principles of western civilisation

62 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

pushed aside and survived all rivals which were not equipped to this end; and this notwithstanding any other advantage whatever that its competitors may have possessed.

Once we have grasped the general application of the principle here discussed, its importance throughout the entire range of the evolutionary process will be evident. Once we come to regard Natural Selection as the controlling and dominating agency behind all the developments in progress throughout life, there can be no doubt as to the significance of the position towards which modern biology has advanced. The centre of gravity in the evolutionary conception can no longer be regarded as being in the present. We can no longer with the early evolutionists regard only the effects produced by Natural Selection on the individual engaged in a struggle for existence, waged simply with those other individuals around it “ with which it comes into competition for food or residence, or from which it has to escape, or on which it preys.” From the very nature of the principle of Natural Selection we see that it must produce its most efficient results where it acts through the largest numbers. The interests of the existing individuals, and of the present time, as we now see them, are of importance only in so far as they are included in the interests of this unseen majority in the future.

In the development with which we have been concerned, it is necessary to consider results which appear to us to be successive, and separated by vast intervals of time, as being in actual effect as though they had been simultaneous. Keeping this

1 Origin of Species, chap. iii.