Individual Accommodation on Evolution 99 



after all ; for of all the variations tending in the direction 

 of an adaptation, but inadequate to its . complete per- 

 formance, only those will be supplemented and kept alive 

 which the intelligence ratifies and uses. The principle of 

 selective utility applies to the others or to some of them. 

 So natural selection kills off the others ; and the future 

 development at each stage of a species' evolution must be 

 in the directions thus ratified by intelligence. So also with 

 imitation. Only those imitative actions of a creature 

 which are useful to him will survive in the species, for in 

 so far as he imitates actions which are injurious, he will 

 aid natural selection in killing himself off. So intelligence, 

 and the imitation which copies it, will set the direction of 

 the development of the complex instincts even on the 

 Darwinian theory ; and in this sense we may say that 

 consciousness is a factor.' 



2. The mean of pJiylogenetic variations being tints made 

 more determinate, further phylogenctic variations follow 

 about this mean, and these variations are again utilized 

 in the process of ontogenetic accommodation. So there is 

 continual phylogenetic progress in the directions set by 

 ontogenetic accommodation. 'The intelligence supple- 

 ments slight co-adaptations and so gives them selective 

 utility ; but it does not keep them from getting further 

 selective utility as instincts, reflexes, etc., by further varia- 

 tion' (from an earlier page). 'The imitative function, by 

 using muscular coordinations, supplements them, secures 

 accommodations, keeps the creature alive, prevents the inci- 

 dence of natural selection, and so gives the species all the 

 time necessary to get the variations required for the full 

 instinctive performance of the function ' (from an earlier 

 page). 'Conscious imitation, while it prevents the incidence 



