Pre/ormism and Accommodation 45 



the other aspect of the joint series. Hence we must draw 

 directly upon the resources of that science, psychology, 

 which makes the interpretation of the psychological move- 

 ment its business. 



§ 5. P reformism and Accommodation 



There is here what seems to me to be a fundamental 

 error in the general theory of preformism ; and I shall 

 state the point in a form in which it answers also a criti- 

 cism of organic selection. It is said that the accommoda- 

 tions and modifications which are effected by the individual 

 organism simply show the unfolding of what the congenital 

 endowment of the creature has made possible; conse- 

 quently, that these accommodations are sufficiently ac- 

 counted for by the natural selection of the congenital 

 variations which contribute to this endowment, so that 

 there is nothing really additional or new in a theory which 

 emphasizes these modifications.^ That this is a partial 

 truth only it is easy to show. It becomes evident so soon 

 as we come to see that the characters which the individual 

 develops are a compound, as has been said above, of his 

 hereditary impulses with the forces of his environment. 

 If it were simply a matter of continued reproduction with- 

 out determinate evolution from generation to generation, 

 then it would make no difference what the individuals 

 might undergo during their lives, provided the germ-plasm 

 remained unaffected. But so soon as it becomes a question 

 of descent with adaptations which are selected from a great 

 many possible ones, in intergenetic correlation with the 

 modifications of individuals, then the question as to which 



1 Cf. the remarks on the relation of organic to natural selection in Chap. 

 VIII. § 7. 



