Page:Carroll Lane Fenton - A History of Evolution (1922).djvu/54

 Rh clined to "lump" things. No Japanese artist would think of painting two dogs, or two streams, or two houses that resembled each other in every respect, for he knows that every thing in the universe, whether it be alive or dead, organic or inorganic, differs from every other thing in the universe. Sometimes the difference is easily seen, as that between a shark and a goldfish, or a Negro and a Scandinavian or Teuton. At others it is almost indistinguishable, and can be discovered only by the most accurate micrometer, or the most precise chemical analysis. But always the difference exists, the variation is present, and this fact is the basis for Darwin's belief in the inborn necessity for all living things to vary.

The second factor, that of a struggle for existence, was suggested to Darwin by a reading of Malthus' classic paper on population. All creatures normally tend to increase in numbers. Mating fish produce millions of eggs in a season; chickens rear nestfulls of young; rabbits and guinea-pigs produce litter after litter of young from the matings of two parents—everywhere, both in nature and in domestication, living things seem to be on the increase. And yet we have no evidence that (excluding the rather doubtful influence of man) there are more animals on earth today than there were half a million years ago; the probabilities are that there are fewer. Clearly, therefore, some process is at work which prevents the seeming increase from taking place.