THE METHOD OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION. 431 



derful property of individual variability, whose only use would then be 

 to enable man to improve his domestic animals and cultivated plants. 

 We should thus have two rival systems at work, and we might almost 

 imagine Mr. Sullivan's cosmic spirits — William and James — to be reali- 

 ties, and that each had been experimenting in organic development on 

 our earth in order to see whose scheme was the most satisfactory.' 



As evidence of the actual existence of this hypothetical "organic 

 stability," Mr. Galton adduces the j^atterns in thumb and finger 

 marks, which he has so carefully studied. In his Royal Society 

 paper on this subject he tells us that these marks fall into definite 

 groups and can be systematically classified, and he actually describes 

 and figures twentj^-five distinctive patterns arranged under three 

 very distinct classes. He then urges that these fundamentally dis- 

 tinct classes are strikingly analogous to genera in biology, and as 

 the patterns are so insignificant in every way that they can in them- 

 selves be neither useful nor ornamental, and can therefore never have 

 been the subjects of selection, they prove, he thinks, "that natural 

 selection has no monopoly of influence in forming genera, but that it 

 could be wholly dispensed with, the internal conditions acting by them- 

 selves being amply sufiicient to form them." And it is from the case of 

 these finger marks that he considers the reality of positions of organic 

 stability has been x^roved, and that they are "comj)etent to mold races 

 without any help whatever from the process of selection." 



At first sight this may appear to be sound reasoning, and to be ftital 

 to some of the claims of the Darwinians, but further examination will 

 show that it is a pure fallacy arising from the vague use of terms, and 

 from comparing quite different things as if they were of the same nature. 

 The fallacy depends on applying the terms of classification in system- 

 atic biology to groups of single objects which have no real relation with 

 the genera and species of the naturalist. The essential character of a 

 species in biology is that it is a group of living organisms, sei)arated 

 from all other such groups by a set of distinctive characters, having 

 relations to the environment not identical with those of any other group 

 of organisms, and having the power of continuously reproducing its 

 like. Genera are merely assemblages of a number of these species 

 which have a closer resemblance to each other in certain important and 

 often prominent characters than they have to any other species. It 

 will be more intelligible and more instructive if we confine ourselves to 

 species as the unit of comparison with Mr. Griton's groups of stable 

 finger ijatterns, in order to show the fundamental differences between 

 them. And first we see that Mr. Galton classifies the marks them- 

 selves, not the individuals who iDossess the marks. He tells us that the 

 very same general varieties in these marks are found in English, Hin 

 doos, and negroes, and, presumably in all other races; and, further, 

 that he has "failed to observe any correlation between the patterns and 



' See Strand Magazine, Vol. IV. 



