Book Description

Excerpt from Luck, or Cunning, as the Main Means of Organic Modification?: An Attempt to Throw Additional Light Upon Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection I showed that if the view for which I was contending was taken, many facts which, though familiar, were still without explanation or connection with our other ideas, would remain no longer isolated, but be seen at once as joined with the mainland of our most assured convictions. Among the things thus brought more comfortably home to us was the principle underlying longevity. It became apparent why some living beings should live longer than others, and how any race must be treated whose longevity it is desired to increase. Hitherto we had known that an elephant was a long-lived animal and a y short-lived, but we could give no reason why the one should live longer than the other that is to say, it did not follow in immed iate coherence with, or as intimately associated with, any familiar principle that an animal which is late in the full development of its reproductive system will tend to live longer than one which reproduces early. If the theory of Life and Habit be admitted, the fact of a slow-growing animal being in general longer lived' than a quick developer is seen to be connected with, and to follow as a matter of course from, the fact of our being able to remember any thing at all, and all the well-known traits of memory, as Observed Where we can best take note of them, are perceived to be reproduced with singular fidelity in the development of an animal from its embryonic stages to maturity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."