EVOLUTION OF THE COLORS OF BIRDS. 51 



It will be necessary to understand clearly the scope 

 and meaning of the term natural selection, or Darwin- 

 ism, as it is frequently called in recognition of its enun- 

 ciator, before inquiring into what it can accomplish. 

 Darwin himself used the term in two different senses, 

 more narrowly as synonymous with Spencer's term sur- 

 vival of the fittest and in the broader interpretation of 

 the cause of modifications including the facts of varia- 

 tion. In this latter application, however, it is inac- 

 curate and misleading. Indeed, the process, is as a rule, 

 not one of selection, as Lloyd Morgan has pointed out,* 

 but rather of rejection, in which case natural elimina- 

 tion becomes a more correct term. But how can any 

 change be brought about in a species by this process? 

 Prof. J. G. Schurman in a chapter on tiie Metaphysics 

 of Darwinism t writes as follows of natural selection: 

 " There have been objections to the theory, especially 

 to the somewhat startling assumption that the results of 

 man's purposive selection in breeding could be attained 

 and that, too, on a much larger scale — by the blind and 

 purposeless operations of nature; but granting all that 

 the hypothesis requires of us, we are still in presence of 

 the fact that natural selection, or survival of the fittest, 

 can accomplish nothing until it is supplied with mate- 

 rial for ' selection,' until there has appeared upon the 

 field an antecedent 'fittest' — a fittest organ, function, 

 habit, instinct, constitution, or entire organism. Natu- 

 ral selection produces nothing; it only culls from what is 

 already in existence. The survival of the fittest is an 

 eliminative, not an originative, process." 



So obvious is the above assertion that it needs no dis- 

 cussion. A variation must be originated before it can 



* Animal Life and Intelligence, p. 79. 



tThe Ethical Import of Darwinism, pp. 77-78. 



