But after the feather was fully developed it opened up great possibilities of a strong and light extension of the flapper, helpful in running or useful in leaps from tree to tree. Archæopteryx, another early bird, which is also figured in the Outline, has a sort of bat-wing fore-limb with feathers instead of membrane. It was a woodland creature, and flew as a flying fox or a flying lemur or even a bat flies. All these facts are widely known, and all that trouble about the half-leg, half-wing, dissolves before them. But consider what a hash they make of Mr. Belloc’s argument, and how pitifully it scurries off before them on its nondescript stumps of pretentious half-knowledge, half-impudence! So much for zero the second.
Troubles of Mr. Belloc as a Matrimonial Agent
The final of this wonderful trinity of a prioris is a repetition of an argument advanced ages ago by Queen Victoria’s Lord Salisbury, when he was President of the British Association. Even then it struck people that he had been poorly coached for the occasion. Assuming that one or two individuals have got all these “survival value” differences in the correct proportions—against which the chances are zero—how by any theory of Natural Selection are we to suppose they will meet, breed, and perpetuate them? So this argument runs. The chances are again declared to be zero, the third zero, and Mr. Belloc, I gather, calls in Design again here and makes his Creative Spirit, which has already urged these two individuals, lions, or liver flukes or fleas or what not, to make an effort and adapt themselves, lead them now to their romantic and beneficial nuptials, while the Theory of Natural Selection grinds its teeth in the background and mutters “Foiled again.”
But this third argument reinforces the first, in showing what is the matter with Mr. Belloc’s ideas in this group of questions. He has got the whole business upside down. I rather blame the early Darwinians in this matter for using so inaccurate a phrase as the “Survival of the Fittest.” It is to that phrase that most of Mr. Belloc’s blunderings are due. Yet he ought not to have been misled. He had a summary of modern views before him. He criticises my Outline of History, he abuses it, and yet he has an extraordinary trick of getting out of its way whenever it swings near his brain-case. I warn the readers of that modest compendium expressly (and as early as page 16) that the juster phrase to use is not the Survival of the Fittest, but the Survival of the Fitter. I do what I can throughout to make them see this question not in terms of an individual, but in terms of the species.
Yet Mr. Belloc insists upon writing of “the Fittest” as a sort of conspicuously competitive prize boy, a favourable “sport,” who has to meet his female equivalent and breed a new variety. That is all the world away from the manner in which a biologist thinks of the process of specific life. He sees a species as a vast multitude of individuals in which those without individual advantages tend to fail and those with them tend to be left to continue the race. The most important fact is the general relative failure of the disadvantaged. The fact next in order of importance is the general relative survival of the advantaged. The most important consequence is that the average of the species moves in the direction of advantageous differences, moving faster or slower according to its rate of reproduction and the urgency of its circumstances—that is to say, to the severity of its death-rate. Any one particular individual may have any sort of luck; that does not affect the general result.
I do not know what Mr. Belloc’s mathematical attainments are, or indeed whether he has ever learnt to count beyond zero. There is no evidence on that matter to go upon in these papers. But one may suppose him able to understand what an average is, and he must face up to the fact that the characteristics of a species are determined by its average specimens. This dickering about with fancy stories of abnormal nuptials has nothing to do with the Theory of Natural Selection. We are dealing here with large processes and great numbers, secular changes and realities broadly viewed.
I must apologise for pressing these points home. But I think it is worth while to take this opportunity of clearing up a system of foggy misconceptions about the Theory itself that may not be confined altogether to Mr. Belloc.
Mr. Belloc Comes to His Evidence
And now let us come to Mr. Belloc’s second triad of arguments—his arguments, as he calls them, “from Evidence.” The sole witness on Evidence called is his own sturdy self. He calls himself into the box, and I will admit he gives his testimony in a bluff, straightforward manner—a good witness. He says very properly that the theory of Natural Selection repudiates any absolute fixity of species. But we have to remember that the rate of change in any species is dependent upon the balance between that species and its conditions, and if this remains fairly stable the species may remain for as long without remarkable developments, or indulge in variations not conditioned by external necessities. The classical Lingula of the geological text-books, a warm-water shell-fish, has remained much the same creature throughout the entire record, for hundreds of millions of years it may be. It was suited to its submarine life, and hardly any variation was possible that was not a disadvantage. It swayed about within narrow limits.
This admission of a practical stability annoys Mr. Belloc; it seems to be a mean trick on the part of the Theory of Natural Selection. He rather spoils his case by saying that “according to Natural Selection” the swallow ought to go on flying “faster and faster with the process of time.” Until it bursts into flames like a meteor and vanishes from our world? And the Lingula ought to become more and more quiescent until it becomes a pebble? Yet plainly there is nothing in the Theory of Natural Selection to make the swallow fly any faster than its needs require. Excess of swiftness in a swallow may be as disadvantageous as jumping to conclusions can be to a controversialist.