192 EVOLUTION 



also appreciated: use and disuse have their 

 organic consequences, and for Darwin these 

 were, at least in part, transmissible. Simil- 

 larly the Environment was appreciated, alike 

 in moulding and in pruning. Finally was 

 added the idea of Nature's environmental 

 and adaptive sifting — the essentially new 

 and triumphant doctrine of Natural Selection. 



The post-Darwinian scepticism as to the 

 transmission of functional and environ- 

 mental modifications might seem to involve 

 a denial of the evolutionary importance of 

 anything but the varying organism and the 

 winnowing environment; but what it really 

 means is that the previous appreciation of 

 the evolutionary importance of function and 

 of environment was not subtle enough. We 

 ask, therefore, wherein the importance of 

 function and environment may consist, if 

 there is no direct transmission of the indi- 

 vidual modifications which they undoubtedly 

 produce. This involves a careful inquiry 

 into the relation between organism and 

 environment. 



Relations between Organism and En- 

 vironment. — (1) It is impossible to separate 

 living creatures from their surroundings. 

 To do so in fact is to kill them; to do so in 

 theory is to turn biology into necrology, a 

 vice which has always too largely infested 



