GERMINAL SELECTION. 29 



fresh attention to these secondary modifications, which 

 must always occur in harmony with the primary one, 

 and has, as he thinks, advanced in this set of facts, a 

 convincing disproof of the contention that such coa- 

 daptive modifications of numerous cofunctioning parts 

 can rest on natural selection. Now, although I deem 

 his conclusion precipitate, yet the very fact of a sim- 

 ultaneous, functionally concordant, yet essentially di- 

 versified modification of numerous parts, points con- 

 clusively to the circumstance that something is still 

 wanting to the selection of Darwin and Wallace, which 

 it is obligatory on us to discover, if we possibly can, 

 and without which selection as yet offers no complete 

 explanation of the phyletic processes of transformation. 

 There is a hidden secret to be unriddled here before we 

 can obtain a satisfactory insight into the phenomena 

 in question. We must seek to discover why it hap- 

 pens that the useful variations are always present. 



Herbert Spencer appealed to Lamarck's principle for 

 the explanation of coadaptation, and it is certain that 

 functional adaptation is operative during the individ- 

 ual life, and that it compensates in a certain measure 

 the inequalities of the inherited constitutions. I shall 

 not repeat what I have said before on this subject, nor 

 maintain, in refutation of Spencer's contention, that 

 functional adaptation is itself nothing more than the 

 efflux of intra-biontic selective processes, as Spencer 

 himself once suggested in a prophetic moment, but 

 which it was left for Wilhelm Roux to introduce into 

 science as "the struggle of the parts" of organisms. 1 

 I shall only remark that if functional adaptations were 

 themselves inheritable, this would still be insufficient 



1 Compare my essay, Neue Gedanken zur Vererbungsfrage, 

 Jena, 1895, P- 10, second footnote. 



