158 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 



7. Accommodation, Cooperation, and Anticipation. 



There are three spheres in which it is evident that progressive 

 adaptation for beneficent action may take place, commencing with the 

 smallest beginnings in the lowest organisms and progressing through 

 each higher stage of evolution till the widest reaches are attained. 



These three spheres are accommodational action (whether tentative 

 or directly discriminative), co ' perative action, and anticipatory action. 

 Power for action in these spheres is characteristic of the realm of 

 life, and is manifested in higher and higher efficiency till accommo- 

 dation tries to prove all things, holding fast that which is good ; and 

 cooperation, associated with division of labor and community of 

 interest, reaches out to include in its beneficence the living universe ; 

 and anticipation, pressing forward in its unbounded aspirations and 

 ideals, becomes the ever-advancing influence of foresight and predic- 

 tion in the activities of the highest beings. 



8. Increasing Recognition of Autonomic Factors. 



It will be observed that throughout the whole process of evolution 

 there are two classes of factors, of which one class may be called hete- 

 ronomic, in that they are subject to change through change in activi- 

 ties lying outside of the group of organisms concerned, while the other 

 class may be called autonomic, in that they are controlled by changes 

 within the group of organisms. In the theory of evolution presented 

 by Darwin, the importance of the heteronomic factors was empha- 

 sized, though he pointed out one form of autonomic transformation, 

 which he designated by the term "sexual selection." To some ex- 

 pounders of evolution natural selection has seemed so completely 

 sufficient that they have been ready to deny the influence of sexual 

 selection (or of any other autonomic factor) in producing divergence. 

 On the whole, however, there has been during the past ten or fifteen 

 years an increasing recognition of the fact that not only sexual selec- 

 tion but other autonomic factors are more or less effective in control- 

 ling the forms of selection, and, therefore, in controlling the transfor- 

 mations of organisms. Do we not thus reach one explanation of the 

 continuous advance the determinate evolution of certain large 

 classes of animals? 



The recognition of autonomic factors in the process of evolution is 

 giving new insight into the self-developing endowments of the organic 

 world. 



