It has been also pointed out that, in civilized Man, there is going on a new class of equilibrations—those between his actions and the actions of the societies he forms (First Prin. § 175). Social restraints and requirements are ever altering his activities and by consequence his nature; and as fast as his nature is altered, social restraints and requirements undergo more or less re-adjustment. Here the organism and the conditions are both modifiable; and by successive conciliations of the two, there is effected a progress towards equilibrium.
More recently we have seen that in every species, there establishes itself an equilibrium of an involved kind between the total race-destroying forces and the total race-preserving forces—an equilibrium which implies that where the ability to maintain individual life is small, the ability ta propagate must be great, and vice versâ. Whence it follows that the evolution of a race more in equilibrium with the environment, is also the evolution of a race in which there is a correlative approach towards equilibrium between the number of new individuals produced and the number which survive and propagate.
The final result to be observed is that in Man, all these equilibrations between constitution and conditions, between the structure of society and the nature of its members, between fertility and mortality, advance simultaneously towards a common climax. In approaching an equilibrium between his nature and the ever-varying circumstances of his inorganic environment, and in approaching an equilibrium between his nature and all the requirements of the social state, Man is at the same time approaching that lowest limit of fertility at which the equilibrium of population is maintained by the addition of as many infants as there are subtractions by death in old age. But in a universe of which all parts are in motion and every part is consequently subject to change of conditions, neither this equilibrium nor any other equilibrium can become complete.
THE END.
APPENDICES.
APPENDIX A.
SUBSTITUTION OF AXIAL FOR FOLIAR ORGANS IN PLANTS.
I append here the evidences referred to in [§ 190]. The most numerous and striking I have met with among the Umbelliferæ. Monstrosities having the alleged implication, are frequent in the common Cow-Parsnep—so frequent that they must be familiar to botanists; and wild Angelica supplies many over-developments of like meaning. Omitting numerous cases of more or less significance, I will limit myself to two.
Fig. 69.
One of them is that of a terminal umbel, in which nine of the outer umbellules are variously transformed—here a single flower being made monstrous by the development of some of its members into buds; there several such malformed flowers being associated with rays that bear imperfect umbellules; and elsewhere, flowers being replaced by umbellules: some of which are perfect, and others imperfect only in the shortness of the flower-stalks. The annexed Fig. [69], representing in a somewhat conventionalized way, a part of the dried specimen, will give an idea of this Angelica. At a is shown a single flower partially changed; in the umbellule marked b, one of the rays bears a secondary umbellule; and there may be seen at c and d, several such over-developments.