Characters as Adaptive and Specific. 283 



our knowledge of what is everywhere a finely gradu- 

 ated process of transmutation. Hence, if we place 

 this unquestionably " necessary deduction " from 

 the general theory of descent side by side with the 

 alleged "necessary deduction" from the theory of 

 natural selection, we cannot avoid the following 

 absurdity — Whether or not a given form is to be 

 regarded as necessarily due to natural selection, 

 and all its characters necessarily utilitarian, is to be 

 determined, and determined solely, by the mere 

 accident of our having found, or not having found, 

 either in a living or in a fossil state, its varietal 

 ancestry. 



8. But this leads us to consider the final and 

 crowning incongruities which have been dealt with in 

 the present chapter. For here we have seen, not 

 only that our opponents thus draw a hard and fast 

 line between "varieties" and 'species" in regard 

 to " necessary origin " and ' necessary utility," but that 

 they further draw a similar line between " species " 

 and " genera ' in the same respects. Yet, in ac- 

 cordance with the general theory of evolution, it is 

 plainly as impossible to draw any such line in the 

 one case as it is to do so in the other. Just as 

 fixed varieties are what Darwin called " incipient 

 species," so are species incipient genera, genera 

 incipient families, and so on. Evolutionists must 

 believe that the process of evolution is everywhere 

 the same. Nevertheless, while admitting all this, the 

 school of Huxley contradicts itself by alleging some 

 unintelligible exception in the case of " species," while 

 the school of Wallace presses this exception so as to 

 embrace " specific characters." Indeed Mr. Wallace, 



