2IO Variatio7is and Orthoplasy 



by seizing upon this additional utility, carry evolution on 

 farther than it had gone before. For example, muscular 

 strength in biting would in no way prevent the evolution 

 of hardness of teeth. The accommodation factor would 

 be gradually dispensed with, since the most unsuccessful 

 of those which depended upon accommodation would be 

 eUminated. In the case of an instinct, for example, which 

 represents congenital endowment at its best, this would 

 give the gradual shifting of the congenital mean toward 

 the full endowment, even though the creatures could — or 

 some of them could — still survive on the earlier basis of 

 strenuous accommodation. It would be a case — as in all 

 other cases of natural selection — of more or fewer indi- 

 viduals surviving, and a consequent shifting of the mean. 

 Moreover, as is pointed out in an earlier place,^ in many 

 instances we find both types of function, the congenital 

 and the accommodative, serving somewhat different utili- 

 ties, and so existing together. 



At the same time we have the advantage of recognizing 

 the state of things which the organicists point out, in cases 

 in which it exists. There are undoubtedly functions for 

 which the accumulation of congenital variations would have 

 no utility, or would be of positive disutility. In these cases 

 we find either a state of ' balance ' between the organism 

 and its environment, or the actual decay of congenital 

 functions. In the state of balance, the accommodations 

 of the individuals would be made again and again in suc- 

 cessive generations, and no further development of con- 

 genital endowment would take place. This flexibility of 

 application which the principle of organic selection allows, 

 seems to be one of its great advantages. 



1 Chapter VI. § i. 



