INTRODUCTION 



forms multiplying asexually, they are defined by conspicuous 

 morphological characteristics. 



But the investigation of the laws of variation included the 

 question of the causes of this variation. In this respect also 

 Darwin had left a great gap in the explanation of the 

 origin of species. It was because he left variation essentially 

 to chance that he was unable to say much on the question 

 why it occurred at all. Indeed, it was the most zealous 

 adherents of Darwin who made, and still make, the great 

 mistake of treating the selection depending on utility as the 

 power which by its own action brings forth those variations of 

 the characters of the organism which afford the possibility of 

 that selection ; or at least, the mistake of not perceiving clearly 

 how far selection, how far Darwinism as a whole, is from being 

 able to explain these variations. 



The Darwinian principle of utility, the selection of the 

 useful in the struggle for existence, does not explain the first 

 origin of new characters. It explains only — and that in my 

 opinion only partially — the progress and the gradually effected 

 pre-eminence of these characters. 



Darwin's assertion that every character occurring in an 

 organism must either be now useful to it, or must once have 

 been useful, — an assertion whichDarwin himself did not adhere 

 to, but from which latterly he withdrew more and more, — has 

 certainly more than anything else led to the false conception 

 we have mentioned, for he set up utility as the only ruler in 

 the organic kingdom. By the unconditional assumption of 

 this supremacy it was quite overlooked that utility is a purely 

 relative conception, and that therefore it cannot possibly be 

 the fundamental principle of the forms of the organic world. 



Before anything can be useful it must first be. Why, by 

 what means, is it brought into existence ? That is the wider 

 question which I have put to myself 



But if there are agencies independent of utility which 



