ADAPTATION 391 



I am correspondingly ignorant. But, when I see in such a species 

 a structure, the function, the utility, of which I am too ignorant 

 to perceive, I do not leap to the conclusion that it has no function, 

 or no useful function. I remember my own species, and, bearing in 

 mind that all species apparently fit their environments as well as 

 my own, I seek, if possible, to learn the function and usefulness 

 of the structure. Even when I fail, which is very often, I yet 

 remain convinced that almost certainly both the function and the 

 usefulness exist. 



649. From the time that Darwin taught that plants and 

 animals had undergone evolution for their own benefit, not for 

 that of men, this opinion has been, until very recently, the accepted 

 scientific view. But now a new school of thought, or if not of 

 thought at least of opinion, has arisen, which (as may be judged 

 from the following passages, examples of many that might be 

 quoted) tells us that more correct and less dogmatic is the opinion 

 that, in many instances at least, the structures of remote species 

 have not been evolved because of their usefulness, but, on the 

 contrary, have come into being and have persisted in spite of a 

 complete uselessness. " The claim of the opponents of the theory 

 that Darwinism has become a dogma contains more truth than 

 the nominal followers of this school find pleasant to hear ; but let 

 us not, therefore, too hastily conclude that Darwin's theory is 

 without value in relation to one side of the problem of adaptation ; 

 for, while we can profitably reject, as I believe, much of the theory 

 of natural selection, and more especially the idea that adaptations 

 have arisen because of their usefulness, yet the fact that living 

 things must be adapted more or less well to their environments in 

 order to remain in existence may, after all, account for the wide- 

 spread occurrence of adaptation in animals and plants." 1 "To 

 imagine that a particular organ is useful to its possessor, and to 

 account for its origin because of the imagined benefit conferred, 

 is the general procedure of the followers of this school." 2 The 

 writer is mistaken. The 'claim' that evolution is other than 

 adaptation appears, not so much unpalatable as absurd to the 

 followers of Darwin ; the reasoning by which it is supported 

 excites, not chagrin, but amazement. The following is a case 

 in point. " As an example of a change in the organism that is 

 of no use to it may be cited the case of the turning white of the 

 hair in old age in man and in several other mammals. The 

 absorption of bone at the angle of the chin in man is another 



1 T. H. Morgan, Evolution and Adaptation, p. ix. * Op. cit., p. 453. 



