Characters as Adaptive and Specific. 263 



Nevertheless, as a matter of fact, Darwin was perfectly 

 consistent in putting forth this view, because, unlike 

 Wallace, he was not under the sway of any antecedent 

 dogma erroneously deduced from the theory of 

 natural selection. 



Next, without reference to Darwin's authority, let 

 us see for ourselves where the inconsistency really lies. 

 To allow that generic characters may be useless, while 

 denying that specific characters can ever be so (unless 

 correlated with others that are useful), involves an 

 appeal to the argument from ignorance touching 

 the ancestral habits, life-conditions, &c., of a parent 

 species now extinct. Well, even upon this assumption 

 of utility as obsolete, there remains to be explained the 

 "stability" of useless characters now distinctive of 

 genera, families, orders, and the rest. We know that 

 specific characters which have owed their origin to 

 utility and have afterwards ceased to present utility, 

 degenerate, become variable, inconstant, "rudimen- 

 tary," and finally disappear. Why, then, should these 

 things not happen with regard to useless generic 

 distinctions? Still more, why should they not happen 

 with regard to family, ordinal, and class distinctions? 

 On the lines against which I am arguing it would 

 appear impossible that any answer to this question 

 can be suggested. For what explanation can be 

 given of the contrast thus presented between the 

 obsolescence of specific characters where previous 

 utility is demonstrable, and the permanence of 

 higher characters whose previous utility is assumed ? 

 As we have already seen, Mr. Wallace himself 

 employs this consideration of permanence and con- 

 stancy against the view that any cause other than 



