Organic Selection as Supplementary 139 



ducks, which have no instinct to take up water when they 

 see it,i and would perish if dependent upon the congenital 

 variations which they have, nevertheless imitate the mother 

 fowl, and thus, by supplementing their congenital equip- 

 ment, are so kept alive. In other fowls the drinking in- 

 stinct has gone on to perfection and become self-acting. 

 Here the accommodation secured by imitation saves the 

 species — apart from their getting water at first acciden- 

 tally — and directs its future evolution. Further, (2) in 

 cases of * correlated variations' — the second objection 

 urged above to the exclusive operation of natural selection 

 — the same influence of organic selection is seen. For 

 the variations which are not adequate at first, or are only 

 partially correlated, are supplemented by the accommoda- 

 tions which the creature makes, and so the species has the 

 time to perfect its inadequate congenital mechanism. On 

 this hypothesis it is no longer an objection to the theory of 

 the origin of complex instincts without use-inheritance, that 

 these complex correlations could not have come into exist- 

 ence all at once ; since this principle gives the species 

 time to accumulate and perfect its organization of them. 



Similarly, the objections cited above to the theory of 

 use-inheritance cannot be brought against organic selec- 

 tion. In the first place (i) the more trivial and varied 

 experiences of individuals — such as bodily mutilations, 

 etc. — which it is not desirable to perpetuate, whether 

 good or bad in themselves, would not be taken up in the 

 evolution of the race, since organic selection would set a 

 premium only on the variations which were important 

 enough to be of some material use or on such as were 



1 See LI. Morgan, Habit and Instinct, pp. 44 f., and his citations from Eimer, 

 Spalding, and Mills. 



