Darwin has called "natural
selection." Natural selection is not a force, but a process,
resulting from the combined action of the forces of environment. It
is not a cause in any proper sense of the word, but a result of a
myriad of interacting forces. The combination of these forces in a
process of natural selection leading directly to a moral and
spiritual goal demands an explanation in some ultimate cause. This
explanation we have already tried to find.
It is a process of extinction. It favors the fittest, but only by
leaving them to enjoy the food and place formerly claimed, or still
furnished, by the less fit. In any advancing group, as the less fit
are crowded out, and the better fitted gain more place and food and
more rapid increase, the whole species becomes on an average better
conformed. More abundant nourishment and increased vigor seem also
to be accompanied by increased variation. And by the extinction of
the less fit the probability is increased that more fit individuals
will pair with one another and give rise to even fitter offspring,
possessing perhaps new and still more valuable variations.
But if, of a group of weaker forms, those alone survive which adopt
a parasitic life, those which in adult life move the least will
survive and reproduce; there will result the survival of the least
muscular and nervous.
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