PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 395 
imutation and hybridisation utterly fail to account. Of course the argument of 
natural selection is called in to get over this difficulty. hose organisms which 
happen to exhibit favourable mutations will survive and hand on their advan- 
tages to the next generation, and so on. It has frequently been pointed out 
that this is not sufficient. Mutations occur in all directions, and the chances of 
a favourable one arising are extremely remote. Something more is wanted, and 
this something, it appears to me, is to be found in the direct response of the 
organism to environmental stimuli at all stages of development, whereby in- 
dividual adaptation is secured, and this individual adaptation must arise again 
and again in each succeeding generation. Moreover, the adaptation must, as 
I pointed out before, tend to be progressive, for each successive generation builds 
upon a foundation of accumulated experience and has a better start than its 
predecessors. 
Of course natural selection plays its part, as it must in all cases, even in 
the inorganic world, and I believe that in many cases—as for example in pro- 
tective resemblance and mimicry—that part has been an extremely important 
one. But much more important than natural selection appears to me- what 
Baldwin’ has termed ‘Functional Selection,’ selection by the organism itself, 
out of a number of possible reactions, of just those that are required to meet 
any emergency. As Baldwin puts it, ‘It is the organism which secures from 
all its overproduced movements those which are adaptive and _ beneficial.’ 
Natural selection is here replaced by intelligent selection, for I think we must 
agree with Jennings * that we cannot make a distinction between the higher and 
the lower organisms in this respect, and that all purposive reactions, or adjust- 
merts, are essentially intelligent. 
Surely that much-abused philosopher, Lamarck, was not far from the truth 
when he said, ‘ The production of a new organ in an animal body results from a 
new requirement which continues to make itself felt, and from a new movement 
which this requirement begets and maintains.’ * Is not this merely another way 
of saying that the individual makes adaptive responses to environmental stimuli ? 
Where so many people fall foul of Lamarck is with regard to his belief in the 
inheritance of acquired characters. But in speaking of acquired characters 
Lamarck did not refer to such modifications as mutilations; he was obviously 
talking of the gradual self-adjustment of the organism to its environment. 
We are told, of course, that such adjustments will only be preserved so long 
as the environmental stimuli by which they were originally called for continue 
to exercise their influence. Those who raise this objection are apt to forget that 
this is exactly what happens in evolution, and that the sine qua non of develop- 
ment is the proper maintenance of the appropriate environment, both internal 
and external. Natural selection sees to it that the proper conditions are main- 
tained within very narrow limits. 
A great deal of the confusion that has arisen with regard to the question of 
the inheritance of acquired characters is undoubtedly due to the quite unjustifi- 
able limitation of the idea of ‘inheritance’ to which we have accustomed our- 
selves. The inheritance of the environment is, as I have already said, just as 
important as the inheritance of the material foundation of the body, and whether 
or not a newly acquired character will be inherited must depend, usually at 
any rate, upon whether or not the conditions under which it arose are inherited. 
It is the fashion nowadays to attach very little importance to somatogenic 
characters in discussing the problem of evolution. The whole fundamental 
structure of the body must, however, according to the epigenetic view, be due to 
the gradual accumulation of characters that arise as the result of the reactions 
of the organism to its environment, and which are therefore somatogenic, at any 
rate in the first instance, though there is reason to believe that some of them 
may find expression in the germ-cells in the formation of organ-forming sub- 
stances, and possibly in other ways. Blastogenic characters which actually 
originate in the germ-cells appear to be of quite secondary importance. _ 
We still have to consider the question, How is it that organic evolution has 
* Development and Evolution (New York, 1902), p. 87. 
* Behaviour of the Lower Organisms (New York, 1906), pp. 334, 339. 
® Histoire naturelle des Animaux sans Vertébres, tom. i. 1815, p. 185. 
