GERMINAL SELECTION. 67 



of the picking out of those having the power to exist 

 from those having the power to originate. If there 

 is any solution possible to the riddle of adaptiveness 

 to ends, a riddle held by former generations to be in- 

 soluble, it can be obtained only through the assistance 

 of this principle of the self-regulation of the originat- 

 ing organisms, and we should not turn our faces and 

 flee at the sight of the first difficulties that meet its 

 application, but should look to it whether the appar- 

 ent effects of this single principle of explanation are 

 not founded in the imperfect application that is made 

 of it. 



If I am not mistaken the situation is as follows : We 

 had remained standing half way. We had applied 

 the principle, but only to a portion of the natural units 

 engaged in struggle. If we apply the principle 

 throughout we reach a satisfactory explanation. Se- 

 lection of persons alone is not sufficient to explain the 

 phenomena ; germinal selection must be added. Ger- 

 minal selection is the last consequence of the applica- 

 tion of the principle of Malthus to living nature. It 

 is true it leads us into a terrain which cannot be sub- 

 mitted directly to observation by means of our organs 

 of touch and by our eyes, but it shares this disadvant- 

 age in common with all other ultimate inferences in 

 natural science, even in the domain of inorganic na- 



only disappear gradually and slowly when it has become su- 

 perfluous; yet this does not prevent our recognising every 

 stage of its degeneration as adapted when compared with its 

 precursor. Further, it does not militate against the correct- 

 ness of the above proposition that there are also characters 

 whose fitness consists in their being the necessary accompani- 

 ments of other directly adapted features, as, for instance, the 

 red color of the blood. 



