and he showed for the first time
that the latter have an evolutionary significance. Because his logical
assembly of wide series of facts in this and later volumes did so much to
convince the intellectual world of the reasonableness of evolution, Darwin
is usually and wrongly hailed as the founder of the doctrine. It is
interesting to note in passing that Alfred Russel Wallace presented a
precisely similar outline of nature's workings at about the same time as
the statement by Darwin of his theory of natural selection. But Wallace
himself has said that the greater credit belongs to the latter
investigator who had worked out a more complete analysis on the basis of
far more extensive observation and research.

The fundamental point from which the doctrine of natural selection
proceeds is the fact that all creatures are more or less perfectly adapted
to the circumstances which they must meet in carrying on their lives; this
is the reason why so much has been said in earlier connections regarding
the universal occurrence of organic adaptation. An animal is not an
independent thing; its life is intertwined with the lives of countless
other creatures, and its very living substance has been built up out of
materials which with their endowments of energy have been wrested from the
environment. Every animal, therefore is engaged in an unceasing struggle
to gain fresh food and new energy, while at the same time it is involved
in a many-sided conflict with hordes of lesser and greater foes. It must
prevail over all of them, or it must surrender unconditionally and die.
There is no compromise, for the vast totality we individualize as the
environment is stern and unyielding, and it never relents for even a
moment's truce.

To live, then, is to be adapted for successful warfare; and the question
as to the mode of origin of species may be restated as an inquiry into the
origin of the manifold adaptations by which species are enabled to meet
the conditions of life. Why is adaptation a universal phenomenon of
organic nature?

The answer to this query given by Darwinism may be stated so simply as to
seem almost an absurdity. It is, that if there ever were any unadapted
organisms, they have disappeared, leaving the world to their more
efficient kin. Natural selection proves to be a continuous process of
trial and error on a gigantic scale, for all of living nature is involved.
Its elements are clear and real; indeed, they are so obviou