ORGANIC SELECTION 277 



tions, in combination, form a proper basis for natural 

 selection. 



Natural selection, then, preserves individuals thus 

 favoured to the exclusion of the others and the innate 

 variation is in turn preserved and transmitted, owing 

 to the usefulness of the acquired variation. After- 

 wards, the combined variations accumulate in the 

 same way in which, according to Darwin, useful in- 

 nate variations accumulate, that is, by gradual addi- 

 tion, and the character in question becomes more and 

 more developed. Darwin himself instanced certain 

 characters which, while serving no useful purpose, 

 may owe their survival to the usefulness of some other 

 correlated character. Both characters were innate in 

 the cases cited by Darwin ; in the theory we are deal- 

 ing with, one of the characters, which plays toward 

 the other the part of a protector, is an acquired char- 

 acter. 



This would solve the arduous problem of the incip- 

 ient stages of useful variations and another no less 

 distressing problem — that of the heredity of acquired 

 characters. Heredity would therefore be a matter 

 of illusion, for what is inherited is not the visible 

 somatic variation, but the invisible innate variation 

 coincident with the former. 



In the series of generations this coincidence becomes 

 more and more perfect, for it is beneficial, and natural 



