32 CHANGE 



poseful, arising from the effect upon the young 

 of their parents' habits : so the giraffe might 

 lengthen its neck by the striving of giraffes to 

 reach higher foliage. Peculiarities which were 

 of no direct advantage in the struggle for life 

 might, nevertheless, be established through their 

 influence in attracting the opposite sex. " Sexual" 

 contributed to " natural " selection in the develop- 

 ment of characteristics. Some years ago this 

 hypothesis was almost universally accepted by 

 science. It has since lost ground ; but its 

 straitest adherents have narrowed and hardened 

 it by denying that either " mutations " or the 

 inheritance of acquired, as opposed to in-born, 

 aptitudes, have contributed at all to evolutionary 

 progress. 



It is difficult to believe that the gradual 

 accumulation of small random fluctuations could 

 have evolved such a complicated structure as the 

 human eye ; could have elaborated instincts which 

 would be suicidal if not exercised from the first 

 with the minutest accuracy, and instincts which 

 co-ordinate the behaviour of two separate gen- 

 erations ; or could have enabled animals not 

 only to make better use of their environment but 

 to migrate to another environment as from the 

 sea to the land. Nor is it evident how fluctuations 

 incidental to individuals could have crystallized 

 into the characters that mark a type could have 

 brought into existence a species, the members of 

 which would not interbreed with their near 

 relations. A still more serious objection is that 

 fluctuations are swamped by sexual generation. 

 It has been proved that any peculiarities of a 

 father, which are inherited by his sons, are less 

 fully developed in them in fact that the effect of 

 sexual generation is constantly to repress eccen- 

 tricity, and draw peculiarities back to the 



