28 DARWINISM AND RACE PROGRESS. 



characters in his later writings ; and we find that 

 in the " Origin of Species " he is inclined to abandon 

 them altogether, and accept the position now held 

 by the Neo-Darwinian School of Galton and Weis- 

 mann. He says (pp. 117, 118), "If under changed 

 conditions of life, a structure, before useful, becomes 

 less useful, its diminution will be favoured, for it will 

 profit the individual not to have its nourishment 



wasted in building up useless structures Thus, 



I believe, natural selection will tend in the long run 

 to reduce any part of the organism as soon as it 

 becomes through changed habits superfluous." 



Just as Darwin himself, as time went on, laid more 

 and more stress upon the importance of selection, and 

 less and less upon the transmission of acquired char- 

 acters, most naturalists have tended to follow him 

 in the same direction. It may be said, I think, 

 without gainsay, that, since Darwin's death, the most 

 important and outstanding work done by the biolo- 

 gists has been the uprooting of much of the La- 

 marckian doctrine, originally held, not without 

 question, however, by Darwin himself. The biologist 

 of to-day is more Darwinian than Darwin, and 

 explains on the Darwinian hypothesis even those 

 cases which had presented difficulties to Darwin's 

 own mind. 



