It leads to the improvement of each creature in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life; and consequently, in most cases, to what must be regarded as an advance in organisation.

Nevertheless, low and simple forms will long endure if well fitted for their simple conditions of life.
Natural selection, on the principle of qualities being inherited at corresponding ages, can modify the egg, seed, or young as easily as the adult.

Among many animals sexual selection will have given its aid to ordinary selection by assuring to the most vigorous and best adapted males the greatest number of offspring.

Sexual selection will also give characters useful to the males alone in their struggles or rivalry with other males; and these characters will be transmitted to one sex or to both sexes, according to the form of inheritance which prevails.
Whether natural selection has really thus acted in adapting the various forms of life to their several conditions and stations, must be judged by the general tenour and balance of evidence given in the following chapters.

But we have already seen how it entails extinction; and how largely extinction has acted in the world's history, geology plainly declares.