The Unpopular Review, Number 19: July-December 1918Various
History
The Unpopular Review, Number 19: July-December 1918
Various
American periodicals
More than that: some of these young will tend to possess those
advantageous differences--this by the laws of variation as antidote
needed just here for the laws of heredity--in even more marked degree
than existed in the parents, while others will possess them in less
degree and still others in about the same degree. Hence, the particular
young showing the increased differences will be the individuals of this
generation to survive in the struggle. These will then leave behind them
new young again tending to possess in varying degree those advantageous
variations from the old or species type that make them especially "fit
for the conditions under which they must live."
Thus there will result, in a series of many generations, a gradual
shifting of the character of the species to the type characterized by an
ever increasing and perfecting of the original advantageous differences.
This is "species transformation," or the "origin of species" by natural
selection. It is evolution on a basis of life and death struggle;
extinction of the unfit; and survival of the fit, fitter or fittest. And
just as with the different individuals inside the species, so with the
different varying species. Each struggles with the other and the one or
ones with the advantageous differences win at the expense of the others.
There is no doubt of the fascinating plausibility and seeming reality
and sufficiency of this explanation. It makes a strong appeal to the
logical mind; to the theory-spinning brain. You can understand it, prove
it, expand it, improve on it, and, all this almost without ever seeing
an animal or a plant, or knowing anything of its actual life and
relations to the world it lives in. No wonder it fascinated and seized a
world demanding a logical explanation for the theory of evolution. No
wonder that this explanation of Darwin, offered at the same time with a
clear elucidation of the evolution theory itself to a world just ready
for both, came to be the one all-sufficient explanation, came to be a
scientific dogma of the most dogmatic type.
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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