CH. xvn METAPHYSICS OF NATURAL SELECTION 195 



elimination, 1 natural selection is still at work. A force 

 may come to the birth in the process of evolution 

 shall we say, of evolution by natural selection ? which 

 eclipses natural selection itself in importance. Accord- 

 ing to Professor Lloyd Morgan, animal intelligence is a 

 force of this kind. It is " far more rapid " than natural 

 selection. 2 Biologically, it must be regarded as an 

 intensifying of one valuable quality, "plasticity," or 

 adaptiveness and modifiability in the individual or- 

 ganism. The more intelligent, the more adaptable; 

 hence man, who possesses reason, is the most adaptable 

 of all animals, and has spread over the whole world. 

 Intelligent modifiability is inherited, as it were, in blank. 

 Use-inheritance [not in blank] is improbable ; it seems 

 unlikely, says Professor Lloyd Morgan, that "habit" is 

 inherited in later generations as an organic " instinct." 3 

 Abstract modifiability is transmitted, in the form of 

 intelligence ; individual adjustment, helped by teach- 

 ing by the slender fund of animal " tradition " does 

 the rest. Yet even here, where a new force has arisen, 

 natural selection is not abolished. The new force must, 

 I take it, blend with natural selection, so long as 

 struggle lasts. There will now be three effects of 

 natural selection (l) guarding the rear killing off 

 stupid members of the family ; (2) pushing on the van 

 (killing off the less clever too); (3) giving a preference 



1 Mr. Sutherland may be said to plead for elimination in the human 

 race but not for struggle ; Mr. Kidd for struggle but not for elimination. 

 And each of them calls his mutilated remainder natural selection ! 



2 Evidently Natural Selection A is assumed non-telic variation. 



3 I am sorry that I have failed to understand Professor Morgan's 

 subtler suggested substitute for use-inheritance. I cannot see how it 

 differs from simple natural selection (Habit and Instinct, chap, xiv.) Are 

 the modifications postulated in the organism anything more than changes 

 coincident with the variations in the germ ? How are they conditions of 

 variation ? Does not the selecting environment do everything upon 

 this hypothesis of Professor Morgan's ? 



