222 COOK 



tion, if such an expression maybe permitted. The hereditary- 

 instinct or spirit of the species would be subdivided, like the 

 spirits of the gods of the Japanese mythology. We would then 

 need to speculate on the nature and relations of these subordi- 

 nate entities whose only purpose, after all, was to stop a gap in 

 a theory. While selection appeared as the only method of 

 actuating evolutionary motion it was justifiable, perhaps, to use 

 a charitable imagination on this suggestion of fitness by correla- 

 tion, but in the kinetic interpretation, where it is perceived that 

 selection is not the cause of evolution, the correlation assump- 

 tion does not need to be invoked. It is excluded, as the logi- 

 cians would say, by the law of paucity, a beneficent selection 

 which eliminates unnecessarily complicated hypotheses. 



KINETIC ORIGIN OF ADAPTIVE FITNESS. 



Weismann's recognition of the noninheritance of " acquired 

 characters" or "direct adaptations" destroyed the foundation 

 of the older selective doctrine of evolution by environmental 

 causation, and left the means by which adaptation had been 

 attained a complete mystery, especially for those who continued 

 to hold the other half of the doctrine of selection, that species 

 are normally stationary. To logical minds it has appeared 

 obvious that a new foundation must be found or that the whole 

 doctrine of evolution must be given up, whence the special atten- 

 tion given in later years to the " Origin of Fitness," in the hope 

 of finding some way in which the external conditions can pro- 

 duce heritable internal changes in organisms. If the present 

 interpretation of the facts be correct, this is a completely insol- 

 uble problem, or rather it is a gratuitous and artificial one, for 

 there is no such relation as that which the selective school of 

 " Genuine Darwinians" has hoped to ascertain. 



The non-inheritance of "acquired characters" proves that 

 the changes which the environment " causes" are not those on 

 which evolution proceeds, and forbids us to assert any directly 

 causal connection between evolution and environment. Progress 

 toward greater fitness arises and goes forward in quite the same 

 manner as other forms of evolutionary change. The environ- 

 ment establishes, however, requirements of fitness, at times very 



