42 The Selection Theory 



convinced, in the course of years, that the Lamarchian principle 

 ought not to be called in to explain the dwindling of disused parts, 

 I believed that this process might be simply explained as due to 

 the cessation of the conservative effect of natural selection. I said to 

 myself that, from the moment in which a part ceases to be of use, 

 natural selection withdraws its hand from it, and then it must 

 inevitably fall from the height of its adaptiveness, because inferior 

 variants would have as good a chance of persisting as better ones, 

 since all grades of fitness of the part in question would be mingled 

 with one another indiscriminately. This is undoubtedly true, as 

 Romanes pointed out ten years before I did, and this mingling of the 

 bad with the good probably does bring about a deterioration of the 

 part concerned. But it cannot account for the steady diminution, 

 which always occurs when a part is in process of becoming rudi- 

 mentary, and which goes on until it ultimately disappears altogether. 

 The process of dwindling cannot therefore be explained as due to 

 panmixia alone ; we can only find a sufficient explanation in germinal 

 selection. 



IV. Derivatives of the Theory of Selection. 



The impetus in all directions given by Darwin through his theory 

 of selection has been an immeasurable^ one, and its influence is still 

 felt. It falls within the province of the historian of science to 

 enumerate all the ideas which, in the last quarter of the nineteenth 

 century, grew out of Darwin's theories, in the endeavour to penetrate 

 more deeply into the problem of the evolution of the organic world. 

 Within the narrow limits to which this paper is restricted, I cannot 

 attempt to discuss any of these. 



V. Arguments for the reality of the processes 



OF SELECTION. 



(a) Sexual Selection. 



Sexual selection goes hand in hand with natui'al selection. From 

 the very first I have regarded sexual selection as affording an ex- 

 tremely important and interesting corroboration of natural selection, 

 but, singularly enough, it is precisely against this theory that an 

 adverse judgment has been pronounced in so many quarters, and it 

 is only quite recently, and probably in proportion as the wealth of 

 facts in j)roof of it penetrates into a wider circle, that we seem to be 

 a[)proac]iing a more general recognition of this side of the problem 

 of adaptation. Thus Darwin's words in his preface to the second 

 edition (1874) of his book, The Descent of Man and Sexttal Selection, 



