XVII THE METHOD OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION 371 



their ofiPspring always are the most fit, and therefore 

 always survive ! On this theory evolution goes on by the 

 production of new races complete and ready formed, and 

 in perfect harmony with the environment whenever that 

 environment undergoes a change. But no evidence is 

 offered for such an extraordinary developmental power 

 being always at work and always able to produce adaptation 

 to an ever- changing environment. Such a power would 

 be hardly different from the old special creation, or than 

 the pre-ordained harmony of the philosophers ; and it 

 w^ould, moreover, have rendered unnecessary and unin- 

 telligible that rapid multiplication, and consequent 

 enormous expenditure of life, which now prevails. It 

 would equally render unnecessary that wonderful property 

 of individual variability, whose only use would then be to 

 enable man to improve his domestic animals and 

 cultivated plants. We should thus have two rival 

 systems at work, and we might almost imagine Mr. 

 Sullivan's cosmic spirits — William and James — to be 

 realities, and that each had been experimenting in 

 organic development on our earth in order to see whose 

 scheme was the most satisfactory.^ 



Finger-marks as Illustrating Organic Stability. 



As evidence of the actual existence of this hypothetica 

 " organic stability," Mr. Galton adduces the patterns in 

 thumb and finger-marks, which he has so carefully 

 studied. In his Royal Society paper on this subject, he 

 tells us that these marks fall into definite groups and can 

 be systematically classified, and he actually describes and 

 figures twenty-five distinctive patterns arranged under 

 three very distinct classes. He then urges that these 

 fundamentally distinct classes are strikingly analogous to 

 genera in biology, and as the patterns are so insignificant 

 in every way that they can in themselves be neither 

 useful nor ornamental, and can therefore never have been 

 the subjects of selection, they prove, he thinks, "that 

 natural selection has no monopoly of influence in forming 



^ See Strand Magazine, vol. iv. 



B B 2 



