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does not preclude the possibility of an evolution by other and perhaps better means, unless, indeed, it should be held that such a suggestion would impugn the wisdom or the goodness of the Creator, a plea Mr. Spencer could hardly be supposed as willing to advance. As a matter of fact, moreover, as has been shown in the case of domesticated animals, purposive sexual selection, in the absence of competition, is a far more rapid and effective agent of improvement than the elimination of the unfit in a struggle for existence.
Again, as qualifying the effect of Mr. Spencer's first asser- tion, the connotations of the terms "evolution" and "fittest for survival," as used by the biologist, are to be examined. When this is done it is found that " evolution" is not necessarily synonymous with progress or improvement in any broad or ethical sense; and that the "fitness" implied in the latter phrase has also a peculiar and limited meaning.
In the struggle for existence, in the biologic sense, survival is a demonstration only of adaptation to environment, and, as a necessary consequence, the real character of this fitness is wholly determined by the nature of the environment. As Professor Huxley has said in his now famous Romanes Lecture :
In cosmic nature what is fittest depends upon the conditions If our
hemisphere were to cool again, the survival of the fittest might bring about in the vegetable kingdom a population of more and more stunted and humbler and humbler organisms, until the fittest that survived might be nothing but lichens, diatoms, and such microscopic organisms as those which give red snow its color ; while, if it became hotter, the pleasant valleys of the Thames and Isis might be uninhabitable by any animated beings save those that flourish in a tropical jungle. They, as the fittest, the best adapted to changed condi- tions, would, survive. 1
In truth, the very conditions of an unrestricted, unthinking struggle for life between individuals render impossible the sur- vival of exceptionably developed types. Where, as a result of an exceptional variation, an individual differs radically from its kind, this very difference, albeit one indicating development, is a disadvantage to it, as rendering it, as it were, out of rapport with its environment. Thus the effect of competition everywhere
1 Evolution and Ethics, " Collected Essays," Vol. IX.
