THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION. 295 



rudimentary structures, functionally useless, and it can 

 only have been in the course of development during many 

 successive generations, that they assumed their present 

 perfection. Now there is absolutely no evidence to show 

 that the fine beginnings of structures can be useful or 

 profitable to the animal possessing them. They may be 

 harmless, but that is all that can be said. It is, however, 

 the very essence of the theory of natural selection, that 

 the law of the struggle for existence is powerless to pre- 

 serve or intensify any structures except such as are useful 

 to the individual. The fact that a structure may be useful 

 to the race is not enough, as final causes or ends are 

 wholly excluded from the theory of natural selection. 

 Upon the whole, the difficulty of accounting for the pre- 

 servation of incipient organs and structures by the action 

 of natural selection appears to constitute the most formid- 

 able of the arguments which have been urged against Mr 

 Darwin's views ; since it is a general difficulty, and strikes 

 at the very root of the theory of natural selection. 



(2) A second general objection of great weight is that 

 unless 'many individuals should be similarly and simul- 

 taneously modified,' there would be little chance of any 

 useful variation which might have appeared in a species 

 being ultimately preserved and handed down. Any new 

 structure or organ, or any alteration in a pre-existing 

 structure, must be slowly produced, and pass through 

 an incipient stage. If, however, such a new structure, or 

 alteration in an old structure, appeared, to begin with, in 

 only one or two individuals of a species, it could hardly 

 be preserved, as it would be 'lost by subsequent inter- 

 crossing with ordinary individuals.' But it is hardly 



