288 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



CHAPTER VII 



MISCELLANEOUS OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OP 



NATURAL SELECTION 



Longevity — Modifications not necessarily simultaneous — Modifications ap- 

 parently of no direct service — Progressive development — Characters of 

 small functional importance, the most constant — Supposed incompetence 

 of natural selection to account for the incipient stages of useful struc- 

 tures — Causes which interfere with the acquisition through natural 

 selection of useful structures — Gradations of structure with changed 

 functions — Widely different organs in members of the same class, de- 

 veloped from one and the same source — Reasons for disbeheving in 

 great and abrupt modifications 



I WILL devote this chapter to the consideration of 

 various miscellaneous objections which have been 

 advanced against my views, as some of the previous 

 discussions may thus be made clearer; but it would be 

 useless to discuss all of them, as many have been made 

 by writers who have not taken the trouble to understand 

 the subject. Thus a distinguished German naturalist has 

 asserted that the weakest part of my theory is, that I 

 consider all organic beings as imperfect: what I have 

 really said is that all are not as perfect as they might 

 have been in relation to their conditions; and this is 

 shown to be the case by so many native forms in many 

 quarters of the world having yielded their places to in- 

 truding foreigners. Hot can organic beings, even if they 

 were at any one time perfectly adapted to their conditions 

 of life, have remained so, when their conditions changed, 



