I2O A Factor in Evolution 



by keeping socially adaptive creatures alive, while others 

 which do not adapt themselves in this way are cut off. 

 It is also a continuous influence from generation to 

 generation. Animals may be kept alive, let us say in a 

 given environment, by social cooperation only ; these 

 transmit this social type of variation to posterity ; thus 

 social accommodation sets tJie direction of further change, 

 and physical heredity is determined in part by this factor. 

 Furthermore, the process is aided all the while, from gen- 

 eration to generation, by the continuous chain of extra- 

 organic or purely social transmissions. Here are adequate 

 reasons for marking off this influence with the name which 

 allies the phenomenon to that of physical transmission or 

 heredity proper. 



The other terms I do not care so much about. ' Phys- 

 ico-genetic,' ' neuro-genetic,' 'psycho-genetic,' and their 

 correlatives in 'genie,' seem to me to be convenient 

 terms to mark distinctions which would involve long sen- 

 tences without them, besides being self-explanatory. The 

 phrase ' circular reaction ' has now been welcomed as 

 appropriate by psychologists. ' Accommodation ' is much 

 needed as meaning single individual adjustment ; the 

 biological word 'adaptation' refers more, perhaps, to racial 

 or general adjustments. 



