Place of Individual Purpose in Evolution 235 



advanced. Thus evolution is kept consistently to a deter- 

 minate direction, and not violently wrenched by what 

 might be called cosmic caprice. It is done by reducing 

 and controUing the influence of individual variations. So 

 it is necessary that the 'choice,' the capricious will or pur- 

 pose of the individual, should be neutralized if a consist- 

 ent plan of the whole is to be carried out. Otherwise, it 

 would reflect the irregular variations of our private pur- 

 poses. This principle of 'regression' or 'conservation 

 of type ' holds whether the inheritance of acquired modifi- 

 cations be true or not, — whether the effects of personal 

 effort and purpose be transmitted or not, — and as it deals 

 with all the cases, variations and modifications alike, the 

 purposeful deed of the individual can, in any case, be a 

 factor of but minor importance in the result. Its real impor- 

 tance would depend upon its relation to the whole group 

 of agencies entering into heredity. In so far as individual 

 purpose should be in a direction widely divergent from that 

 of the movement in general, it would, by the law of regres- 

 sion, be largely ineffectual ; in so far as it should be in 

 harmony with it, it would be unnecessary and unimportant ; 

 although in the latter case, perhaps, taken with the La- 

 marckian factor, if that be real, it would accelerate bio- 

 logical evolution. 



§ 7. The Place of Individual Purpose in Evolution 



If, after stathig the foregoing points as to the relation of 

 the individual's purposes to a possible teleological construc- 

 tion of the evolution movement as a whole, we go on to 

 inquire as to how far the individual may as a fact con- 

 tribute to the direction of the movement, we recall that 

 the foregoing pages of this work tend to magnify that 



