Page:The Advancing Proletariat (1917).pdf/5

Rh OF THE FORCES OF THE UNIVERSE UPON THE MATTER OF THE UNIVERSE, APPLIED THROUGHOUT THE EONS OF TIME, PRODUCING INNUMERABLE CHANGES, WHICH HAVE FINALLY DEVELOPED HIGHER AND MORE PERMANENT FORMS OF LIFE OUT OF THOSE WHICH WERE LOWER AND LESS STABLE. The physical conditions which compelled changes in ANIMATED NATURE, and under which they occurred, are usually denominated "the environment"—the surrounding influences.

Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace are regarded as the co-discoverers of this great Law of Life. They not only observed the changes in the material Universe, but also the efforts of animated nature to place itself in harmony with the physical world by adjusting itself to these changes. These efforts at adjustment and re-adjustment are now termed "the struggle for existence"; for ANIMATED NATURE MUST CONFORM TO THE CONDITIONS OF THE PHYSICAL WORLD IN ORDER TO SURVIVE. Those forms of life which conform the most successfully are regarded as the most adaptable and, therefore, the best; from which we have the expression "the survival of the fittest" or, "natural selection." In other words, Nature selected these forms as being the fittest to survive.

From a study of plants and the lower forms of animals, it is but a step to the study of the highest form—Man; and, in a state of nature, we find man responding unconsciously to the law of Evolution: changing to correspond to his environment, and persisting in those forms which are in closest harmony with the requirements of nature. Of all creatures, man is probably the most complex, and this complexity was his most baffling problem until the statement of the law of evolution with