362 Darivin, and after Darwin. 



are playing into the hands of Darwin's critics by 

 indirectly countenancing the difficulty which we are 

 now considering. For, if correlation of growth is 

 unreasonably supposed to be the only possible cause 

 of the origin of incipient structures which are not use- 

 ful from the first moment of their inception, clearly 

 the field is greatly narrowed as regards the occurrence 

 of incipient characters sufficient in amount — and, still 

 more, in constancy of appearance and persistency of 

 transmission— to admit of furnishing material for the 

 working of natural selection. But in the measure that 

 incipient characters — whether varietal or specific — 

 are recognised as not always or "necessarily" useful 

 from the moment of their inception, and yet capable of 

 being developed to a certain extent by the causes 

 which first led to their occurrence, in that measure is 

 this line of criticism closed. For of all the variations 

 which thus occur, it is only those which afterwards 

 prove of any use that are laid hold upon and wrought 

 up by natural selection into adaptive structures, or 

 working organs. And, therefore, what we see in 

 organic nature is the net outcome of the development 

 of all the hap[)y chances. So it comes that the 

 appearance presented by organic nature as a whole is 

 that of a continual fulfilment of structural prophecies, 

 when, in point of fact, if we had a similar record of all 

 the other variations it would be seen that possibly 

 not one such prophecy in a thousand is ever destined 

 to be fulfilled. 



Here, then, I feel justified in finally taking leave of 

 the difficulty from the uselessness of incipient organs, 

 as this difficulty has been presented, in varying degrees 



