THE INADEQUACY OF "NATURAL SELECTION." 805 



their edges ; and it is continually being moved about from some 

 of them to others. No advantage is gained. It is simply that the 

 tongue's position renders perpetual exploration almost inevitable ; 

 and by perpetual exploration is developed this unique power of 

 discrimination. Thus the law holds throughout, from this highest 

 degree of perceptiveness of the tongue-tip to its lowest degree on 

 the back of the trunk; and no other explanation of the facts 

 seems possible. 



" Yes, there is another explanation/' I hear some one say : " they 

 may be explained by panmixia." Well, in the first place, as the 

 explanation by panmixia implies that these gradations of percep- 

 tiveness have been arrived at by the dwindling of nervous struc- 

 tures, there lies at the basis of the explanation an unproved and 

 improbable assumption ; and, even were there no such difficulty, 

 it may with certainty be denied that panmixia can furnish an ex- 

 planation. Let us look at its pretensions. 



It was not without good reason that Bentham protested against 

 metaphors. Figures of speech in general, valuable as they are in 

 poetry and rhetoric, can not be used without danger in science and 

 philosophy. The title of Mr. Darwin's great work furnishes us 

 with an instance of the misleading effects produced by them. It 

 runs : — The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or 

 the preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. Here 

 are two figures of speech which conspire to produce an impression 

 more or less erroneous. The expression " natural selection " was 

 chosen as serving to indicate some parallelism with artificial se- 

 lection — the selection exercised by breeders. Now selection con- 

 notes volition, and thus gives to the thoughts of readers a wrong 

 bias. Some increase of this bias is produced by the words in the 

 second title, " favored races ; " for anything which is favored im- 

 plies the existence of some agent conferring a favor. I do not 

 mean that Mr. Darwin himself failed to recognize the misleading 

 connotations of his words, or that he did not avoid being misled 

 by them. In chapter iv of the Origin of Species he says that, 

 considered literally, " natural selection is a false term," and that 

 the personification of Nature is objectionable ; but he thinks that 

 readers, and those who adopt his views, will soon learn to guard 

 themselves against the wrong implications. Here I venture to 

 think that he was mistaken. For thinking this there is the rea- 

 son that even his disciple, Mr. Wallace — no, not his disciple, but 

 his co-discoverer, ever to be honored — has apparently been influ- 

 enced by them. When for example, in combating a view of mine, 

 he says that " the very thing said to be impossible by variation 

 and natural selection has been again and again effected by varia- 

 tion and artificial selection " ; he seems clearly to imply that the 



