98 NATURAL SELECTION AND 



need not, suppose any deliberate reflection in a 

 primitive stage. In conduct, as in other regions 

 of Nature, variations take place "spontane- 

 ously" i.e., they happen to take place how, 

 or why, they take place is, as yet, a matter of 

 pure speculation. The favourable variations are 

 selected i.e., the unfavourable variations lead 

 to the failure and extinction of the organisms 

 which display them. It is the same principle 

 of natural selection which applies to variations 

 in structure and functions, in habits, in imple- 

 ments : useful variations are continually being 

 " selected," prior to any deliberate reflection 

 about the adaptation of means to ends. Thus, 

 in the ethical sphere, we have a selection of 

 types of conduct ; and these, the product of 

 natural struorale and not of reflection, are the 

 earliest moral ideals. Now all this has been put, 

 as clearly as possible, by Mr. Wallace himself, 

 in his earlier work, Contributions to the Theory 

 of Natural Selection (1870), pp. 312,313: 



" Capacity for acting in concert for protection and for the 

 acquisition of food and shelter ; sympathy, which leads all 

 in turn to assist each other ; the sense of right, which checks 

 depredations upon our fellows ; the smaller development of 

 the combative and destructive propensities ; self-restraint in 

 present appetites ; and that intelligent foresight which pre- 



