Are Acquired Habits inherited? 295 



on the more extreme wing contend that every character 

 of each organism owes its existence directly to natural 

 selection, and that there is no character in any organism 

 which is not founded on utility. The influence of natural 

 selection is, they say, so penetrating and all-pervading, 

 that nothing useless, nothing without selection value, can 

 escape elimination. The utmost modification of this view 

 which they will accept, is that involved in the principle of 

 correlation. Every character is, they contend, either itself 

 of direct use, or definitely correlated with some other 

 character which is useful. Correlation, like Mesopotamia, 

 is a blessed word, and full of comfort and solace in the 

 midst of difficulties. Thus modified, the views of the more 

 extreme wing approach those of the other section of 

 natural selectionists, who hold that while steady and 

 continuous elimination has led to the survival of those 

 individuals which are best adapted to the conditions of 

 their environment, it is not necessary that all the 

 characters of these individuals should be of utility or 

 definitely correlated with useful characters. There may 

 thus be congenital traits which are not themselves useful, 

 but are merely incidental; characterizing to some degree 

 a group of organisms, but without direct bearing on the 

 struggle for existence, not themselves, that is to say, of 

 selection value. It is clear that if we extend the meaning 

 of the term "correlation" to the whole of that nexus by 

 which a number of congenital traits are linked together 

 in the same organism, these are correlated with useful 

 characters. This seems, however, a little like begging the 

 question at issue. We may have a number of congenital 

 traits coexisting in the same organism; but if, when a 

 series of generations are carefully observed, these traits 

 are found to vary independently, they can scarcely be said 

 to be correlated, unless we use this term in a sense so 



