Natural Selection turns out to be of only secondary importance. It is
not creative, but only confirmative. It is a weeding-out process; it
is Nature's way of improving the stock. Its tendency is to make
species more and more hardy and virile. The weak and insufficiently
endowed among all forms tend to drop out. Life to all creatures is
more or less a struggle, a struggle with the environment, with the
inorganic forces,--storm, heat, cold, sterile land, and engulfing
floods,--and it is a struggle with competing forms for food and
shelter and a place in the sun. The strongest, the most amply endowed
with what we call vitality or power to live, win. Species have come to
be what they are through this process. Immunity from disease comes
through this fight for life; and adaptability--through trial and
struggle species adapt themselves, as do our own bodies, to new and
severe conditions. The naturally weak fall by the wayside as in an
army on a forced march.
Every creature becomes the stronger by the opposition it overcomes.
Natural Selection gives speed, where speed is the condition of
safety, strength where strength is the condition, keenness and
quickness of sense-perception where these are demanded. Natural
Selection works upon these attributes and tends to perfect them. Any
group of men or beasts or birds brought under any unusual strain from
cold, hunger, labor, effort, will undergo a weeding-out process.
Populate the land with more animal life than it can support, or with
more vegetable forms than it can sustain, and a weeding-out process
will begin. A fuller measure of vitality, or a certain hardiness and
toughness, will enable some species to hold on longer than others,
and, maybe, keep up the fight till the struggle lessens and victory is
won.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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