The Individual in the Animal Kingdom

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912. First edition.

INTRODUCTION OF THE "ARMS RACE" METAPHOR FOR COEVOLUTIONARY ADVANCES--BY A FOUNDER OF THE MODERN SYNTHESIS.

12x17 cm hardcover, red cloth binding, illustrated title to cover, frontis figure of Volvox, i-ix, [3], 167 pp, 4 pp publisher's book list. Spine faded, binding tight, text clean and unmarked, very good in custom archival mylar cover. Cited in Reiss & Ruse The New Biology (2023): "The inevitability of biological progress became the leitmotif of all of Huxley's subsequent writings, despite the fact that he tried to remain, at least in part, true to Darwinian mechanism. In The Individual in the Animal Kingdom (1912), he drew an interesting cultural-biological analogy, using the turn-of-the-century naval arms race between Britain and Germany as the example. First, the cultural: "Halfway through the century, when guns had doubled and trebled their projectile capacity, up sprang the 'Merrimac' and the 'Monitor, secure in their iron breast-plates; and so the duel has gone on". Concluding: "Each advance in attack has brought forth, as if by magic, a corresponding advance in defence" Then, the biological: "With life it has been the same: if one species happens to vary in the direction of greater independence, the inter-related equilibrium is upset, and cannot be restored until a number of competing species have either given way to the increased pressure and become extinct, or else have answered pressure with pressure". Adding: "So it comes to pass that the continuous change which is passing through the organic world appears as a succession of phases of equilibrium, each one on a higher average plane of independence than the one before, and each inevitably calling up and giving place to one still higher."