1893. NATURAL SELECTION AND LAMARCKISM. 347 
If no saving can be effected in the small separate fibres that make 
up muscle and nerve—if economy cannot be brought about in the 
‘separate cubic inches, or ounces, or grammes, of the bodily structure, 
how can it possibly be effected in the whole body, made up of 
those separate inches, or ounces, or grammes? Mr. Spencer 
allows that Natural Selection, and, therefore, panmixia also, can act 
upon aggregates ; and he is, therefore, logically bound to admit that 
they can affect the minute parts of which aggregates are composed. 
The changes are not necessarily as gradual as Mr. Spencer repre- 
sents them. Greatly diminished, or almost aborted, eyes will 
occasionally appear, and the possessors, no longer eliminated through 
failure of vision, will diffuse the degenerative tendency among the 
‘species by intercrossing. 
Fortunately, the question of the possibility of minute reduction 
and minute economy in the shape and weight of organs, without the 
aid of use-inheritance, can be settled by a simple and direct appéal to 
facts. The advice of Solomon, that we should go to the ant to learn 
wisdom, is peculiarly applicable to the Neo-Lamarckian. He can 
test his arguments by an appeal to Nature herself. In neuter insects 
we are furnished with a happy opportunity of excluding use-inheritance 
from the problem. Now, in neuter insects, the effects assumed to be 
impossible have actually occurred. Neuter ants of various species 
possess eyes in all manner of grades of imperfection and smallness 
down to the most rudimentary, and even to the complete loss of the 
eye, of which only a trace of the socket remains. This, like the loss 
of wings, cannot be due to the inheritance of acquired characters, 
since the neuters cannot transmit their acquired characters to 
posterity, and the actual parents still retain the eyes and wings 
necessary for the nuptial flight. What, then, is the use of elaborately 
arguing that accomplished facts are impossible? It is the ways and 
works of Nature that we must study. She cares nothing for the 
theories of philosophers and their fancied impossibilities. She calmly 
does the thing declared impossible ; in neuter insects she reduces and 
economises on the minutest scale without use-inheritance ; she neatly 
and fitly develops, with all due co-ordination and economy, the special 
organs of neuter insects, together with wonderful mental faculties, 
and complex social instincts, which are never exercised, or, indeed, 
possessed, by the parents. Why, then, should we be asked to believe 
that, without the help of use-inheritance, minute economy and 
complex evolution are incredible ? And what argument can possibly 
show that processes which certainly take place in innumerable 
species of ants, bees, termites, and wasps cannot take place in larger 
organisms where we do not happen to possess any special means of 
demonstratively separating the effects of Neo-Darwinian factors from 
those attributed to the transmission of acquired characters ? 
With reference to the arguments advanced against Weismann, I 
may say briefly that, although the bodily, or somatic, elements which 
