676 APPENDIX B. 



operative structures have been evolved. I pointed out that in 

 the absence of any assigned or assignable physical cause, it is 

 necessary to assume a fortuitous concurrence of favourable varia- 

 tions, which means " a fortuitous concourse of atoms ; " and that 

 it would be just as rational, and much more consistent, to assume 

 that the structure of the entire organism thus resulted. 

 No reply. 



It is reasonable to suspect that Professor Weismann recog- 

 nized these difficulties as insuperable, for, in his Romanes Lecture 

 on " The Effect of External Influences upon Development," instead 

 of his previous indirect reply, he makes a direct reply. Reverting 

 to the stag and its enlarging horns, he alleges a process by which, 

 as he thinks, we may understand how, by variation and selection, 

 all the bones and muscles of the neck, of the thorax, and of the 

 fore-legs, are step by step adjusted in their sizes to the increasing 

 sizes of the horns. He ascribes this harmonization to the inter- 

 nal struggle for nutriment, and that survival of the fittest which 

 takes place among the parts of an organism : a process which he 

 calls u intra-individual-selQCtioTH, or more briefly intra- selection " 

 (p. 12) 



" Wilhclm Roux has given an explanation of the cause of these wonder- 

 fully fine adaptations by applying the principle of selection to the parts of the 

 organism. Just as there is a struggle for survival among the individuals of 

 a species, and the fittest are victorious, so also do even the smallest living 

 particles contend with one another, and those that succeed best in securing 

 food and place grow and multiply rapidly, and so displace those that are less 

 suitably equipped " (p. 12).* 



That I do not explain as he does the co-adaptation of co- 

 operative parts, Professor Weismann ascribes to my having over- 

 looked this "principle of intra selection " an unlucky supposi- 

 tion, as we see. But I do not think that when recognizing it a 

 generation ago, I should have seen its relevancy to the question 



* Prof. Weismann is unaware that the view here ascribed to Roux, writing 

 in 1881, is of far earlier date. In the Westminster Review for January, 1860, 

 in an essay on " The Social Organism," I wrote : " One more parallelism to 

 be' here noted, is that the different parts of a social organism, like the differ- 

 ent parts of an individual organism, compete for nutriment ; and severally 

 obtain more or less of it according as they are discharging more or less duty." 

 (See also Essays, i, 290.) And then, in 1876, in TJie Principles of Sociology, 

 vol. i, 247, I amplified the statement thus : " All other organs, therefore, 

 jointly and individually, compete for blood with each organ . . . local 

 tissue-formation (which under normal conditions measures the waste of tissue 

 in discharging function) is itself a cause of increased supply of materials 

 the resulting competition, not between units simply, but between organs, 

 causes in a society, as in a living body, high nutrition and growth of part* 

 called into greatest activity by the requirements of the rest." Though I did 

 not use the imposing phrase " intra-individual-selection," the process described 

 is the same. 



