reason rendered, we either define the lines of variation and check its rapidity, or we give an unwarrantable decision to natural selection. This rapidity of action natural selection does not manifest, but quite the reverse. The majority of slight variations would be relatively indifferent in the struggle for life, and those more significant would frequently require much time to establish themselves. Indeed, till we take in the truly organic law of heredity, there are present no means of holding any ground that may be gained anywhere in evolution.

Natural selection fails also to give due weight to some important considerations. A very influential element in a calculation of the chances of survival is that of the relative number of the varieties competing for existence. A species of inferior powers may prevail through superior numbers.* Natural selection, by its tardy and hesitating movement, would be a hopeless constructive agent in the many exigencies which the theory itself involves of constant and constantly modified changes with undefined directions and undefined rapidity.

(3) Moreover, neither the present life on the globe nor the record of previous life offers those innumerable shades of relation which the theory implies. Species are better defined than natural selection would lead us to expect, while neither the vegetable nor the animal kingdom presents sufficient remains of the abortive, semi-abortive and wholly successful forms which must have filled all open spaces to repletion. We have no traces of the great multitude which the throng

* Genesis of Species, p. 69.