Criticisms of Organic Selection 153 



acters. The wish may be expressed — in the way of a 

 friendly suggestion of a reciprocal kind to Professor Mills 

 — that he take up the arguments which are advanced above 

 to show that the Lamarckian view of heredity is not en- 

 titled to the exclusive use of the principle of use and disuse, 

 but that evolution may profit by the accommodations of 

 individual creatures without the inheritance of acquired 

 characters, through what is here called organic selection, 

 and show why they do not apply. 



As to the ' newness ' of the general view which is here 

 published, that is a matter of so little importance that I 

 refer to it only to disavow having made untoward claims. 

 Of course, to us all * newness ' is nothing compared with 

 'trueness.' As to the working of what is called 'social he- 

 redity,' it does not appear that this position was called new, 

 i.e.y that social influences do aid the individual in his develop- 

 ment and enable him to keep alive. This had been taught 

 by Wallace, and was later signalized — as a writer on the 

 papers points out in Nature — by Weismann and others. 

 What seemed to be new about social heredity, besides the 

 name, which appeared appropriate for reasons given in the 

 Naturalist articles,^ was the use made of it to illustrate 

 the broader principle of organic selection — which latter 

 principle, from certain points of view, was new. A word 

 in regard to that. 



If we give up altogether the principle of modification by 

 use and disuse, and the possibility of new adjustments in a 

 creature's own lifetime, we must go back to the strictest 

 preformism. But to say that such new adjustments 

 influence phylogenetic evolution only in case they are in- 

 herited, is to go over to the theory of Lamarckism. Now 



1 Chap. VIII. § 8. See also Chap. XIII. § 3, note. 



