1899] A ZOOLOGIST ON THE PRINCIPLES 01 SCIENCE 425 



organic world, by no means an absolute fitness, but enough to call for 

 explanation. We also admit that living individuals are capable of 

 nurture. But, says our author, the nurture may be good or bad, quite 

 as often the latter as the former. Therefore " the view that nature is 

 inherited nurture throws no light on the problem of fitness." Accept- 

 ing the premises, and setting aside natural selection and other factors, 

 we might "rant that unfit modifications would so counterbalance fit 

 modifications that the conclusion would follow. All turns on what is 

 meant by good and bad nurture. Nurture is, broadly speaking, the 

 influence of environment on the individual. Now environment can be 

 called favourable or unfavourable only from a relative standpoint ; that 

 is, so far as the individual is or is not adapted to it. We know no 

 absolute good, no ultimate morality. As Dr. Brooks elsewhere says, 

 " no natural response can be beneficial under all circumstances " ; 

 education and experience (which, be it noted, are forms of nurture) 

 enable organisms to distinguish the harmful from the beneficial 

 occasions (p. 13). It is admitted that we start with individuals 

 fairly adapted to their environment, and that change in the individual 

 or the race is induced by change of environment. But it is clear that 

 any change of environment breaks the harmony and must be unfavour- 

 able to the individual : natural actions are beneficial only " so far as 

 the environment is, on the average, like the ancestral environment" 

 (p. 10). The change continues unfavourable until the individual or 

 the race is modified in accordance with it ; but this modification is 

 itself beneficial only so long as the same change persists or continues 

 in the same direction. Nurture is found to have been " bad," when 

 the change of environment has been only temporary or extraordinary. 

 Man, subject as he is to so many and great changes of environment, is 

 often led into surroundings or habits at variance with the general con- 

 ditions that govern the existence of his race : these things we rightly 

 call " bad." But with other organisms and in physical nature changes 

 of environment are, as a rule, secular, and proceed equably in a certain 

 direction. Therefore their action on individuals is regular ; in other 

 words, the nurture is " good " on the whole. But if it be conceded 

 that the good preponderates ever so little over the bad, the objection 

 of Dr. Brooks becomes invalid. 



Other considerations advanced by our author may render the 

 Lamarckian doctrine unnecessary or less probable ; but I fail to see 

 that they prove the inheritance of modifications to be either impossible 

 or ineffectual. 



The first consideration is the truth of natural selection and its 

 adequacy to account for animated nature as we see it. Most Neo- 

 Lamarckians admit natural selection, though not its complete adequacy. 

 But even that might be admitted without diminishing the adequacy or 

 effect of any other factor. It is hardly necessary to point out that, 

 under any theory of heredity and development, the rate of progress 



