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Since the fact of Northwick's survival had been established beyond question by the publication of his letter, Hilary's mind in regard to him had undergone a great revulsion. It relieved itself with a sharp rebound from the oppressive sense of responsibility for his death, which he seemed to have incurred in telling Northwick that the best thing for him would be a railroad accident.
Occasional advance is the outcome, but so also is frequent retrogression. There is no scientific basis for the belief in a natural order that everywhere and always makes for progress. Competition or the struggle for existence ensures at most merely the survival of the fittest; but survival of the fittest does not always mean survival of the best.
Even from the earliest times no struggle for existence, no doctrine of the survival of the fittest, hung over them as with us. No wild animals harassed them; no savages menaced them. A fertile boundless land, a perfect climate, nurtured them tenderly. "Under such conditions they developed only the softer, gentler qualities of nature.
To these highly individualized modern women must be presented more cogent reasons for taking upon themselves the burden of reproducing the group. It is obvious that from just this energetic female stock we should obtain a large part of the next generation if we are at all concerned over the welfare of the group and its chances of survival.
Here indeed were a subject for some modern master, a chance to picture for generations to come an aspect of a mighty age, an age that may some day be deemed but a grotesque and anomalistic survival of a more ancient logic; a gargoyle carved out of chaos, that bears on its features a resemblance to the past and the future.
But, it may be objected, granting that the Doctor in these Fertility processions and dramas represents a genuine survival of a feature of immemorial antiquity, a survival to be traced alike in Aryan remains, in Greek literature, and in Medieval ceremony, what is the precise bearing upon the special subject of our investigations?
That he had been the tool of others, she knew, but it remained a question in her mind how clearly he had perceived the immorality of his course, and of theirs. He had not been given to casuistry, and he had been brought up in a school the motto of which he had once succinctly stated: the survival of the fittest. He had not been, alas, one of those to survive.
Her chief idea of it was, the enrichment of the world by love. Thus did Miss Middleton acquiesce in the principle of selection. And then did the best man of a host blow his triumphant horn, and loudly. He looked the fittest; he justified the dictum of Science. The survival of the Patternes was assured. "I would," he said to his admirer, Mrs.
Moreover, there is reason to believe that its origin dates back to an early period in the evolution of the higher forms of life; and if in the subsequent course of evolution it could have been so organised as to serve a double purpose, so much the more reason would there have been for its survival. In what does the instinct consist?
Like Balaam and other unwilling prophets, the agents seem moved by an inner compulsion to say and do their allotted parts whether they will or no. This unweeting manner of performance is the true ring by which, in this refurbishing age, a fossilized survival may be known from a spurious reproduction.
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