Ill IMPERFECT ADAPTATION 6S 



ing his assertion with respect to his own example, and sav- 

 ing : We do not know the numerous relations and conditions 

 of the life of the whale with anythinj.^ like sufficient accuracy 

 to enable us to conclude that it is so perfectly adapted to 

 them as Weismann believes. Our own conditions and rela- 

 tions of life we do know accurately, and although it is a 

 matter of taste with us whether we think our adaptation 

 greater or less, it must surely be conceded that in an}- case 

 this adaptation cannot be called perfect, even in the prime 

 of life, not to speak of childhood and gray old age. 



What would be the total, to take only one instance, if we 

 were to add up the number of men in vigorous life who perish 

 miserably every year simply in consequence of the entrance 

 of fruit-stones or similar bodies into the useless vermiform 

 appendix of the caecum ? 



Besides, it is self-evident that adaptation must be more 

 perfect in highly-organised forms much exposed to the dangers 

 of life than in many of a lower order ; in those which have 

 and had more enemies much greater than in others which 

 have fewer, and whose ancestors had fewer. And I do not 

 dispute the fact that there are forms which seem to be adapted 

 to external conditions in as high a degree as Weismann 

 supposes. But that only proves that those particular forms 

 are possibly so adapted. But with respect to all forms which 

 vary in a high degree, the assumption of perfect adaptation is 

 a 'priori improbable. And there are forms of which we can 

 say with all the required certainty, that their bodily shape 

 must depend not on adaptation, but on a " crystallisation," 

 resulting from the physical and chemical action of external 

 agents on the material of the organism subjected to them. 



In my essay on " The Variation of the AVall-Lizard " I ex- 

 pressed, with reference to adaptation, the view that the in- 

 dividual is not necessarily constructed entirely in accordance 

 with its own requirements : " Only an inconceivably gross 



F 



