NATURAL SELECTION 385 



existence due to the fortuitous possession of fortunate congenital 

 differences (variations). The nine hundred and ninety with unfortu- 

 nate congenital variations are extinguished in the struggle and with 

 them the opportunity for the perpetuation (by transmission to the 

 offspring) of their particular variations. There are thu\) left ten to 

 reproduce their advantageous variations. The offspring of the ten of 

 course will vary in their turn, but will vary around the new and 

 already proved advantageous parental condition: among the thou- 

 sand, say, offspring of the original saved ten the same limitations of 

 space and food will again work to the killing off before maturity of 

 rune hundred and ninety, leaving the ten best equipped to reproduce. 

 This repeated and intensive selection leads to a slow but steady and 

 certain modification through the succr*sive generations of the form 

 and functions of the species; a modification always toward adapta- 

 tion, toward fitness, toward a moulding of the body and its behaviour 

 to safe conformity with external conditions. The exquisite adapta- 

 tion of the parts and functions of the animal and plant as we see it 

 every day to our infinite admiration and wonder has all come to exist 

 through the purely mechanical, inevitable weeding out and selecting 

 by Nature (by the environmental determining of what may and what 

 may not live) through uncounted generations in unreckonable time. 

 This is Darwin's causo-mechanical theory to explain the transforma- 

 tion of species and the infinite variety of adaptive modification. A 

 rigorous automatic Natural Selection is the essential idea in Darwin- 

 ism, at least in Darwinism as it is held by the present-day followers 

 of Darwin. " 



OBJECTIONS TO SELECTION 



i. Darwin in a letter to his friend Hooker (January n, 1844) 

 expresses his contempt of Lamarck's ideas in the following words: 

 "Heaven defend me from Lamarck's nonsense of a 'tendency to pro- 

 gression,' 'adaptations from the slow willing of animals,' etc 



Lamarck's work appeared to me to be extremely poor; I got not a 

 fact or idea from it." 



In spite of these views Darwin's Origin of Species is interlarded 

 with Lamarckian explanations. Whenever the author feels the short- 

 comings of the selection factor he lapses into an explanation involving 

 the idea that the effects of use and disuse of organs are inherited. 

 Followers of Darwin, especially Weismann, felt this to be the chief 

 defect in the fabric of Darwinism and bent their efforts chiefly toward 

 purging Darwinism of all taint of Lamarckism. 



