suffering, the harshness and the infinite class segregation of human society are the result. The use of what I have called conscious direction is apparently the only means whereby this chaos can be converted into organized structure.
Outside the gregarious unit, the forms of organic life at any given time seem to be to some considerable extent determined by the fact that the pressure of environmental conditions and of competition tends to eliminate selectively the types which are comparatively unsuited to the conditions in which they find themselves. However much or little this process of natural selection has decided the course which the general evolutionary process has taken, there can be no doubt that it is a condition of animal life, and has an active influence. The suggestion may be hazarded that under circumstances natural selection tends rather to restrict variation instead of encouraging it as it has sometimes been supposed to do. When the external pressure is very severe it might be supposed that anything like free variation {160} would be a serious disadvantage to a species,