also, and equally fit to
survive. We naturally object to being ploughed under. That Russian
_Kultur_ has so far proved itself a vastly inferior product cannot be
doubted, but the evolutionary processes will in time bring a finer and
higher Russia out of this vast weltering and fermenting mass of
humanity. In all these things impersonal laws and forces are at work,
and the balance of power, if temporarily disturbed, is bound, sooner or
later, to be restored just as it is in the inorganic realm.

Evolution is creative, as Bergson contends. The wonder is that,
notwithstanding the indifference of the elemental forces and the blind
clashing of opposing tendencies among living forms,--a universe that
seems run entirely on the trial-and-error principle,--evolution has gone
steadily forward, a certain order and stability has been reached in the
world of inert bodies and forces, and myriads of forms of wonderful
fitness and beauty have been reached in the organic realm. Just as the
water-system and the weather-system of the globe have worked themselves
out on the hit-and-miss plan, but not without serious defects,--much too
much water and heat at a few places, and much too little at a few
others,--so the organic impulse, warred upon by the blind inorganic
elements and preyed upon by the forms it gave rise to, has worked itself
out and peopled the world as we see it peopled to-day--not with forms
altogether admirable and lovely from our point of view, but so from the
point of view of the whole. The forests get themselves planted by the
go-as-you-please winds and currents, the pines in one place, the spruce,
the oaks, the elms, the beeches, in another, all with a certain fitness
and system. The waters gather themselves together in great bodies and
breathe salubrity and fertility upon the land.

A certain order and reasonableness emerges from the chaos and
cross-purposes. There are harmony and cooeperation among the elemental
forces, as well as strife and antagonism. Life gets on, for all groping
and blundering. There is the inherent variability of living forms to
begin with--the primordial push toward the development from within
which, so far as we can see, is not fortuitous, but predestined; and
there is the stream of influences from without, constantly playing upon
and modifying the organism and taken advantage of by it.

The essence of life is in adaptability; it goes into partnership with
the forces and conditions that surro