Infra-selection and Orthoplasy 183 



3. Intra-selection and Orthoplasy 



As to the possible universal application of organic selec- 

 tion, which makes orthoplasy a general theory, it would 

 seem to depend upon whether there are any cases of 

 congenital characters maturing without some accommo- 

 dation due to the action of the life conditions upon 

 the individual's plastic material. The position is main- 

 tained above that there are probably no such characters. 

 It follows that those variations in which the most fortunate 

 combination of innate and acquired elements is secured 

 survive under natural selection; and this means that 

 organic selection is universal. In the words of Groos 

 (Play of Many Eng. trans., p. 373), 'organic selection may 

 possibly be applied to all cases of adaptation (Anpassung).' 



This point of view follows naturally from the position 

 taken up by the school of Organicists already mentioned 

 above, 1 who insist in various ways upon the part played 

 by the organism itself in evolution. The writers of 

 this school, however, either hold to Lamarckian inheri- 

 tance (Eimer), to a form of self-development (Driesch, 

 called ' auto-regulation ' and ' auto-determination ' by 

 Delage), or to Intra-selection (a term of Weismann's) con- 

 sidered as repeating its results anew in eacJi generation 

 (Roux, Delage). Weismann (Romanes Lecture) combines 

 infra-selection, which ' effects the special adaptation of the 

 tissues . . . in eacJi individual ' (' for in each individual 

 the necessary adaptation will be temporarily accomplished 

 by infra-selection ') with the hypothesis of Germinal Selec- 



1 Chap. III. i; cf. Herbst, Formative Reize in Ontogenese (1901). 

 The least modifiable characters, such as coloration as in protective colours, 

 mimicry, etc., would most nearly fulfil this condition. 



