328 ADAPTIVENESS AND PURPOSIVENESS 



fore a variation may have a prospective value. Moreover, 

 the external systematisation v^hich forms the sieve is the 

 embodiment of the results of ages of sifting. Therefore for- 

 tuitousness dvs^indles away. Sir Ray Lankester is inaccurate 

 in speaking of evolution as a '^ chapter of accidents ". 



(4) Again, we must bear in mind that in addition to 

 varying, organisms often take an active part in their own 

 evolution. They are anything but passive in a game Fate 

 plays. They may select the environment that suits them, 

 and play the cards with which variability supplies them. 

 And this is not automatic. If a change in instinctive be- 

 haviour (e.g., that exhibited in fashioning a wasp's nest) 

 be the outcrop of a germinal mutation, it is not likely to 

 persist unless it is congruent with the previously established 

 routine, and it is not likely to come to stay unless it pass 

 muster in the individual apprenticeship when novelties are 

 tested, an apprenticeship in which, according to some care- 

 ful students of behaviour, the slender rill of intelligence 

 is sometimes to be detected even in those creatures most 

 thoroughly dominated by instinctive equipment. 



We see, then, that it is not legitimate to say that a mecha- 

 nistic description has been given of the establishment of 

 adaptations, or even to say, without qualification, that they 

 have been turned out automatically in the workshop of Na- 

 ture. Darwin's comparison of the process to the work of 

 the wind expressed an error of judgment, for the blowing 

 of the wind is altogether mechanically necessitated, and we 

 cannot admit that this is true of organic evolution where 

 individuality exists and counts. 



But let us suppose that v\^e have made some mistake in 

 our argument, and that evolution is more, not less, automatic 

 than Darwin believed. What then? We look with great 



