The inadequacy of "natural selection" / by Herbert Spencer ; reprinted from the Contemporary review.
- Spencer, Herbert, 1820-1903.
- Date:
- [1893]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The inadequacy of "natural selection" / by Herbert Spencer ; reprinted from the Contemporary review. Source: Wellcome Collection.
14/79 (page 160)
![«igain effected by variation and artificial selection”; he seems clearly to imply that the processes are analogous and operate in the same way. Now this is untrue. They are analogous only within certain narrow limits; and. in the great majority of cases, natural selection is utterly incapable of doing that which artificial selection does. To see this it needs only to de-personalise Nature, and to remember that, as Mr. Darwin says, Nature is “ only the aggregate action and pro- duct of many natural laws [forces].” Observe its relative shortcomings. Artificial selection can pick out a particular trait, and, regardless of other traits of the individuals displaying it, can increase it by selective breeding in successive generations. For, to the breeder or fancier, it matters little whether such individuals are otherwise well constituted. They may be in this or that way so unfit for carrying on the struggle for life, that, were they without human care, they would disappear forthwith. On the other hand, if we regard Nature as that which it is, an assemblage of various forces, inorganic and organic, some favourable to the maintenance of life and many at variance with its maintenance—forces which operate blindly—we see that there is no such selection of this or that trait, but that there is a selection only of individuals which are, by the aggregate of their traits, best fitted for living. And here I may note an advantage possessed by the expression “ survival of the fittest; ” since this does not tend to raise the thought of any one character which, more than others, is to be maintained or increased ; but tends rather to raise the thought of a general adaptation for all purposes. It implies the process which Nature can alone carry on—the leaving alive of those which are best able to utilise surrounding aids to life, and best able to combat or -avoid surrounding dangers. And while this phrase covers the great mass of cases in which there are preserved well-constituted individuals, it also covers those special cases which are suggested by the phrase natural selection,” in which individuals succeed beyond others in the struggle for life by the help of particular characters which conduce in important ways to prosperity and multiplication. For now observe the fact which here chiefly concerns us, that survival of the fittest can increase any serviceable trait only if that trait conduces to prosperity of the individual, or of posterity, or of both, in an important degree. There can be no increase of any structure by natural selection unless, amid all the slightly varying structures constituting the organism, increase of this particular one is so advantageous as to cause greater multiplication of the family in which it arises than of other families. Variations which, though advantageous, fail to do this, must disappear again. Let us take a case. Keenness of scent in a deer, by giving early notice of approaching enemies, subserves life so greatly that, other things equal, an indi- vidual having it in an unusual degree is more likely than others to](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28110043_0014.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
