262 Darwin, and after Darwin. 



unimportant for the welfare of the species, they may be, and 

 apparently often have been, transmitted in nearly the same 

 state to numerous, otherwise modified, descendants 1 ." 



Here, and in the context, we have a sufficiently 

 clear statement of Darwin's view first, that unadap- 

 tive characters may arise in species as "fluctuating 

 variations, which sooner or later become constant 

 through the nature of the organism and of surround- 

 ing conditions, as well as through the intercrossing 

 of distinct individuals, but not through natural selec- 

 tion " 2 ; second, that such unadaptive characters may 

 then be transmitted in this their stable condition to 

 species-progeny, so as to become distinctive of genera, 

 families, &c. ; third, that, on account of such characters 

 not being afterwards liable to diverse adaptive 

 modifications in different branches of the species- 

 progeny, they are of more value as indicating lines 

 of pedigree than are characters which from the first 

 have been useful ; and, lastly, they are therefore now 

 empirically recognized by systematists as of most 

 value in guiding the work of classification. To me 

 it appears that this view is not only perfectly rational 

 in itself, but likewise fully compatible with the theory 

 of natural selection which, as I have previously 

 shown, is primarily a theory of adaptive characters, 

 and therefore not necessarily a theory of all specific 

 characters. But to those who think otherwise, it 

 must appear and does appear that there is some- 

 thing wrong about such a view of the case that 

 it was not consistent in the author of the Origin of 

 Species thus to refer non-adaptive generic characters 

 to a parentage of non-adaptive specific characters. 



1 Origin of Species, p. 175. 2 Ibid. p. 176 : italics mine 



