CHAP, xvii METAPHYSICS OF NATURAL SELECTION 2 1 1 



very outset, it is almost incredible that natural selec- 

 tion A should winnow the non-serviceable variations 

 so as to secure an advantageous remainder of any 

 appreciable size. Any other evolutionary force which 

 co-operates with natural selection must eclipse it as a 

 rival, though it may welcome it as an ally. We can- 

 not add the working of natural selection to the 

 working (in the same field) of any directly telic 

 force. But natural selection may multiply the results 

 of the other force if competition is keen enough. 



Let us try to go one step further still. As long 

 as struggle lasts natural struggle struggle plus 

 elimination, 1 natural selection is still at work. A 

 force may come to the birth in the process of evolu- 

 tion shall we say, of evolution by natural selection ? 

 which eclipses natural selection itself in importance. 

 According to Professor Lloyd Morgan, animal intelli- 

 gence is a force of this kind. It is " far more rapid " 

 than natural selection. 2 Biologically, it must be 

 regarded as an intensifying of one valuable quality, 

 "plasticity," or adaptiveness and modifiability in the 

 individual organism. The more intelligent, the more 

 adaptable ; hence man, who possesses reason, is the 

 most adaptable of all animals, and has spread over 

 the whole world. Intelligent modifiability is inher- 

 ited, as it were, in blank. Use-inheritance [not in 

 blank] is improbable ; it seems unlikely, says Pro- 

 fessor Lloyd Morgan, that " habit " is inherited in later 



1 Mr. Sutherland may be said to plead for elimination in the human 

 race, but not for struggle ; Mr. Kidd for struggle but not for elimina- 

 tion. And each of them calls his mutilated remainder natural selec- 

 tion! 



2 Evidently natural selection A is assumed non-telic variation. 



