Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 405
SURVIVAL BY ACCIDENT OR DESIGN? devastating conditions many lower forms of life will flourish and multiply unhindered. The question as to who is the fittest and by what yardstick it could be declared the fittest, remains unanswered. . It is a simple case of survival and no more. It is not the fittest who always survive and whoever survives is not always the fittest. All that we can sensibly conclude is that there are certain species of life that are fittest to survive under certain conditions, and there are some other species of life which are fittest to survive under essentially different conditions. Hence mere survival is no competitive test between the species for judging their respective values. . Now we analyse the case of struggle for existence which occurs within a species when members of the same species are put to various trials of natural calamities. Many of them are eliminated, overwhelmed by the dangers they confront. . Many others display an innate strength against the befalling calamities; some fare so well as to treat them with scant respect. They happily outlive such trials as had destroyed their fellow members. Consider for example a severe epidemic of dysentery. It is likely for it to kill an eminent naturalist while it may altogether spare a farm labourer with only strong guts to his credit, without any other faculties of head and heart to be proud of. Again the same people who survive a specific epidemic may not be able to survive other contagious diseases. Some may die during a spread of cholera while survivors from it may be despatched to death by the yearly recurring disease of influenza or even lesser diseases. . Such are the trials of life. The survival is only relative to the context of a precise situation which does not always adjudge the survivors to be fittest in all qualities of life. The real reasons why natural selection prefers some animals as against others who are apparently doomed by it are 394