Characters as Adaptive and Specific. 285 



characters therefore present some exceptional signifi- 

 cance to the scientific naturalist. So to speak, such 

 divinity doth still hedge a species, that even in the 

 very act of declaring it but an idol of their own 

 creation, these naturalists bow before their fetish as 

 something that is unique — differing alike in its origin 

 and in its characters from the varieties beneath and 

 the genera above. The consequence is that they 

 have endeavoured to reconcile these incompatible 

 ideas by substituting the principle of natural selec- 

 tion for that of super-natural creation, where the 

 particular case of "species" is concerned In this 

 way, it vaguely seems to them, they are able to 

 save the doctrine of some one mode of origin as 

 appertaining to species, which need not " necessarily " 

 appertain to any other taxonomic division. All 

 other such divisions they regard, with their pre- 

 Darwinian forefathers, as merely artificial construc- 

 tions ; but, likewise with these forefathers, they look 

 upon species as natural divisions, proved to be such 

 by a single and necessary mode of origin. Hence, 

 Mr. Wallace expressly defines a species with reference 

 to this single and necessary mode of origin {see above, 

 p. 235), although he must be well aware that there is 

 no better, or more frequent, proof of it in the case 

 of species, than there is in that of somewhat less 

 pronounced types on the one hand (fixed varieties), 

 or of more pronounced types on the other (genera, 

 families, &c.). Hence, also, the theory of natural 

 selection is defined as par excellence a. theory of the 

 origin of species ; it is taken as applying to the 

 particular case of the origin of species in a peculiarly 

 stringent manner, or in a manner which does not 



