48 The Direction of Evolution 



ment. We might as well say that a man is the cause of 

 all the follies of his wayward son because he begot the son, 

 as to say that natural selection is responsible for — or is 

 an adequate explanation of — the results which spring 

 from the accommodations of an organism, simply on the 

 ground that the plasticity of the organism has survived 

 by natural selection. Or, to take a case which more truly 

 depicts the function of natural selection, we might as 

 well say that the mother of Moses and the daughter of 

 Pharaoh were the essential factors in the production of that 

 great lawgiver's work, inasmuch as they warded off the 

 dangers which threatened his life.^ But the endowments 

 of Moses would have been quite ineffective, despite his sal- 

 vation by the women, had not opportunities arisen for him 

 to use his gifts. His actual performance is what counted 

 in history ; and so it is with the humblest organism which 

 accommodates itself to the environment, in so far as it 

 makes effective contribution to the characters of the gen- 

 erations which follow after it.^ 



1 Yet even this figure is allowing too much to natural selection, for the 

 mother of Moses and the daughter of Pharaoh are, when considered as posi- 

 tive agents, more analogous to the positive accommodations which fit the 

 organism to survive ; it is these latter which save the creature's Hfe. This 

 case may suffice to show how impossible it is to put one's finger on any- 

 thing positive to represent natural selection. Of course all will admit that the 

 recognition of the actual facts and factors is the main thing — not the naming 

 of them. Yet questions of the relative roles of the factors are important, both 

 for interpretation and for the integrity of our logic. 



2 Professor James Ward, art. 'Psychology,' in the Ency. Brit., 9th. ed., was 

 one of the earlier writers who pointed out that organisms act very positively in 

 adjusting themselves to their environment, selecting and even changing their 

 life conditions by their own acts. He called this ' subjective selection,' and 

 he has developed in a later publication, Naturalism and Agnosticism, the pos- 

 sible influence this might be expected to have on the future course of 

 evolution, uniting with it, however, the theory of the inheritance of acquired 

 characters. 



