198 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



judicially. It does not therefore hold the important place 

 which its earlier advocates claimed Thus Herbert Spencer 

 entirely overestimated when he wrote "while yet organisms 

 had small ability to coordinate their actions, and adjust them 

 to environal actions, natural selection worked almost alone 

 in molding and remolding organisms into fitness for their 

 changing environments; and natural selection has remained 

 almost the sole agency by which plants and inferior orders 

 of animals have been modified and developed" (7; 552). We 

 have yet to learn of even the simplest individual of the Caryota 

 that does not exhibit clearly heredity, environal action, pro- 

 environal response, as well as selectivism in every minute and 

 every day of its life. The above also traverses the rule which 

 he so emphasized later thus: *'the coordination of actions is a 

 definition of life." 



But to emphasize the destructive at the expense of the con- 

 structive equally obscures issues. Thus to say, as Mivart 

 has done, that by Natural Selection "is meant the result of 

 all the destructive agencies of nature, destructive to individuals 

 and to races by destroying their lives or their powers of propa- 

 gation" (Lessons from Nature, 1876, p. 300) is to present only 

 a part of the negative side of a great law. Without attempting 

 to coordinate, or eliminate, or express the often divergent views 

 of authors during the past half century, we would simply indi- 

 cate that the facts advanced by Darwin alike on the positive 

 and negative sides in chapters III and IV of "The Origin of 

 Species" are as suggestive as they are indicative. 



So one regrets to read Uexkiill's pronouncement, in relation 

 to Darwin's views on the origin of species, that "a positive 

 enrichment of our knowledge has not resulted. The whole 

 enormous intellectual labor was in vain" (Zeit. f. Biol. 50 

 p. 168). This surely expresses the vie\\'])oint of one who has 

 become ol^sessed l)y the importance of his own observations. 



But in su})se(iuent discussions authors have at times indulged 

 in a vague or im})erfect api)lication of terms. Thus so-called 

 "artificial" or human selection has been regarded as distinct 

 from "natural selection." But the domestication and culture 



