144 Determinate Evolution 



series of adaptations which corresponds in a broad way to 

 the series of individual accommodations. 



It may be remarked also that when the intelligence has 

 reached considerable development, as in the case of man, it 

 will outrank all other means of individual accommodation. 

 In intelligence and will (as has been elsewhere urged) ^ the 

 circular form of reaction becomes highly developed, and the 

 result then is that the intelligence and the social life which 

 it makes possible so far control the acquisitions of life as 

 greatly to limit the action of natural selection as a law of 

 evolution. This may be merely indicated here ; the addi- 

 tional note below will take the subject further in the treat- 

 ment of what then becomes the means of transmission from 

 generation to generation, a form of handing down which, 

 in contrast with physical, is called in earlier pages ' Social 

 Transmission.' 



§ 4. Intelligent Direction and Social Progress 



The view of biological evolution already brought out has 

 led us to the opinion that the accommodations secured by 

 the individuals of a species are a determining factor in the 

 progress which the species makes, since, although we can- 

 not hold that these accommodations, or the modifications 

 which are effected by them, are directly inherited from 

 father to son, nevertheless by the working of organic 

 selection, with the subsequent accumulation of variations, 

 the course of biological evolution is directed in the chan- 

 nels first marked out by individual adjustments. The 

 means of accommodation were called above orthoplastic 

 influences in view of the directive trend which they give 

 to the progress of the species. 



1 In the volume, Mental Development, Chaps. X. to XIII. 



