154 PROBLEMS OF EVOLUTION 



brought out and developed small innate points of superiority and 

 given them selection -value. Exercise and play co-ordinate 

 muscular activities so that the machinery works without jarring. 

 Play is a rehearsal of the serious business of life and by fostering 

 intelligence and skill further tends to make the issue of the 

 coming struggle depend on merit and not mere chance. 



Besides preventing waste, exercise, as Professor Mark Baldwin 

 and Professor Lloyd Morgan have shown, has another important 

 influence. We have seen that exercise may so raise the value of 

 some small congenital variation that it decides the question of 

 survival or non-survival. Hence it follows that individuals owing 

 to modifications brought about during the ontogeny, during 

 the individual life, may make shift to meet new circumstances 

 for which by natural endowments they were imperfectly pre- 

 pared. Race variations will follow the direction pointed out by 

 these modifications. Only in the light of this principle are 

 we able to understand the full significance of the education 

 and training of the young by their parents. It directs to some 

 extent the working of Natural Selection and, consequently, the 

 line along which evolution proceeds, since the determination of 

 habits and of the conditions of life is the determination of the 

 qualities in virtue of which the species shall survive. 



The principle just explained is no real reconciliation of the 

 views of Lamarck and Weismann, for it rejects the Lamarckian 

 explanation of the origin of variations. It even strengthens the 

 position of the Neo-Darwinians by showing that Natural Selection 

 can, without any surrender, make use of Lamarckian methods. 

 For it we may claim that it hastens the process of evolution by 

 keeping a species on its line of development, at the same time 

 leaving it plastic, intelligence, to a great extent, taking the place 

 of rigid instinct. It fails, however, to account for the appearance 

 of the right 'variation in the right place, insuring only that the varia- 

 tion is made the most of when it appears. 



How are we to explain what appears to be the fact that there 

 are not in each generation thousands of variations, and all of 

 them ill-suited to the conditions ? No species can suddenly get 

 rid of the character which its long phylogeny has given it. 



