there would even then be a
struggle for existence on an immense scale, and that it would have a
far-reaching "selective" influence, because of the relative plasticity of
many forms of life. Beyond doubt it would, in the course of aeons, have
applied its shears to many forms of life, and probably there would be no
organisms, organs, or associations in the evolution of the ultimate form
of which it had not energetically co-operated. Its influence would,
perhaps, be omnipresent, yet it might be far from being the all-sufficient
factor in evolution; indeed, as far as the actual impulse of evolution is
concerned, it might be a mere accessory. Unless we are to think of the
forms of life as wholly passive and wooden, the struggle for existence
must necessarily be operative, and the magnitude of its results, and their
striking and often bizarre outcome, will tend ever anew to conceal the
fact that the struggle is after all only an inevitable accompaniment of
evolution. And thus we understand how it is that interpretations from the
point of view of an inward law of development, of orthogenesis, or of
teleology, notwithstanding their inherent validity, have _a priori_ always
had a relatively difficult position as compared with the Darwinian view.

It is usual to speak of the "all-sufficiency of natural selection," yet
the champion of the selection-theory admits, as he needs must, that the
struggle for existence and selection can of themselves create absolutely
nothing, no new character, no new or higher combination of the vital
elements; they can only take what is already given; they can only select
and eliminate among the wealth of what is offered.(38) And the offerer is
Life itself by virtue of its mysterious capacity for boundless and
inexhaustible variability, self-enrichment and increase. The "struggle for
existence" only digs the bed through which life's stream flows, draws the
guiding-line, and continually stimulates it to some fresh revelation of
its wealth. But this wealth was there from the beginning; it was, to use
the old word, "potential" in the living, and included with it in the
universal being from which life was called forth. The struggle for
existence is only the steel which strikes the spark from the flint; is,
with its infinite forms and components, only the incredibly complex
channel through which life forces its way upwards. If we keep this clearly
in mind, the alarming and ominous element in the theory shrin