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234 DESIGN IN NATURE<br />
NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL SELECTION CONTRASTED AND CONSIDERED<br />
Natural selection assigns to plants and animals a power to vary, and to discriminate, select, and perpetuate<br />
what is best in themselves, to the suppression and exclusion of the less useful or doubtful parts.<br />
While no plant or animal, from the lowest to the highest, can be regarded as a mere automaton mechanically<br />
formed, mechanically set in motion, and mechanically kept in motion, so, on the other hand, no plant or animal,<br />
from the lowest to the highest, can be credited with the power of selecting and perpetuating the best properties in<br />
itself, to the exclusion of the less desirable properties, in the so-called struggle for existence. Plants and animals<br />
cannot alter their original constitutions :<br />
to do so.<br />
even man cannot add a cubit to his stature, however much he may desire<br />
Natural selection, strictly speaking, is the counterpart, or rather the opposite, of artificial selection, but there<br />
is no proof that natural selection exists. Artificial selection, as is well known, impUes the presence and existence<br />
of a selector or discriminator ; a judge who detects, assorts, and combines excellences in individuals of different<br />
sexes by crossing or inter-breeding. It improves breeds by combining and perpetuating excellences in different<br />
individuals. The selector is outside, or apart from, the thing selected. Natural selection, however, claims a<br />
power, and a very important one, not recognised in artificial selection ; it claims that individual plants and<br />
animals, from the lowest to the highest, can select, combine, and perpetuate their own excellences, as apart from sex<br />
and crossing, and in the absence of a selector, discriminator, and judge. Natural selection in this higher and more<br />
extended sense is a misnomer, and there is absolutely no proof of its existence. If the power to select exists,<br />
it must be referred to something outside the plant and animal. It can, as a matter of fact, only be referred to<br />
the maker, director, and upholder of the plant and animal.<br />
I am aware that the males of animals in many cases fight for the possession of certain females, and that<br />
females prefer certain males, which is a kind of selection ; but this is quite a different thing from saying that the<br />
males and females select and perpetuate what are regarded as the best qualities or properties in themselves. In<br />
reality no such selection is possible. The males and females respectively are to be regarded as aggregates, and<br />
they have no power to select and perpetuate certain properties or quahties (essentially details of themselves), as<br />
apart from these aggregates. In mating, even in man, the motives in selecting are frequently frivolous and sordid<br />
in character, and in no sense calculated to bring out the best qualities of the race. This has only to be stated to<br />
be endorsed. One can readily understand how a living plant or animal can be improved by artificial selection, and<br />
by the blending of good points in two or more individuals of opposite sexes, aided by suitable pabulum, surroundings,<br />
and training ; but it is incomprehensible that natural selection can secure the propagation and perpetuation of the<br />
best qualities in one and the same individual, and as apart from sex and the conditions referred to. Natural<br />
selection cannot be regarded as the main factor in evolution, and evolution itself only obtains in a restricted sense,<br />
and as applied to the types and sub-tj^es of plants and animals.<br />
There is no such thing as an unbroken descent of plants and animals from one and the same tiny speck of<br />
primitive protoplasm by infinite permutations in practically endless time. All that can be said is that the types<br />
and sub-types of plants and animals are capable of improvement within limits. In this sense evolution (if<br />
admitted) carries with it the possibility of progress. The best parts in plants may be artificially cultivated, and<br />
the best traits in animals artificially developed by training and other means.<br />
In this restricted sense, evolution would account for the education and progress of civilised man in every<br />
department of his being ; for his intellectual, social, moral, and religious advances. It would account for the<br />
modifications and improvements in cultivated plants and in domestic animals. It would account for improvements<br />
under favourable conditions, and for retrogression and breeding back under unfavourable conditions, in wild<br />
plants and animals. It would lend itself to law and order both as regards progression and retrogression ;'<br />
being advance, with occasional retrogression in particular cases and under pecuhar circumstances.<br />
the rule<br />
That the scheme of creation, as we know it, is progressive and continuous is proved by the histories of<br />
existing plants and animals, by the presence in the crust of the earth of large numbers of fossils, in many cases<br />
of rudimentary extinct plants and animals, by the formation of sedimentary, volcanic, and other rocks in ancient<br />
and recent times, &c. The scheme is a well-ordered and supervised one. It completely eliminates the element<br />
of chance. It provides for everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen. It is a case of the<br />
Creator everywhere m time and space, and of accident and blind chance nowhere. An all-powerful over-ruling<br />
vigilant Creator, Supervisor, and Upholder is an absolute necessity in the Cosmos as revealed to us and as we<br />
behold it.
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