284 



ELIMINATION AND SELKCTION. 



upon them our favours. This enables us also to soften the 

 rigour of the blinder law ; to let the full stress of competi- 

 tive elimination fall upon the worthless, the idle, the profli- 

 gate, and the vicious ; but to lighten its incidence on the 

 deserving but unfortunate. 



Too little importance han, perhaps, boon attached of lato 

 years to the mental element in evolution. Iti Lamarckism 

 it took a foremost place. "Every considerable alteration in 

 the local circumstances in which each race of animals 

 exists," wrote Lamarck, as summarized by Lyell, " causes a 

 change in their wants ; and these new wajits excite them to 

 now actions and habits. These actions require the more 

 frequent employment of some parts before but slightly 

 exercised, and, their greater dovelojmient follows as a con- 

 sequence of tills more frequent use. Other organs no longer 

 in use are impoverished and. diminished in size, nay, are 

 sometimes entirely annihilated, while in their place now 

 parts are insensibly produced for the discharge of new func- 

 tions." * In the reaction against Lamarckism, the mental 

 element fell into the background. But those naturalists 

 who have kept abreast of philosophy are more and more 

 coming round to the view that mind and body are indis- 

 solubly connected — that the mind does not act ah extra, but 

 is an integral and essential part of the organic whole. In 

 two ways is the mind-element operative ; in enabling the 

 intelligent organism to avoid elimination, and in furthering 

 the process of selection. 



I do not mean to imply that the mind-olemont can 

 originate anything, cxce))t in reaction to suiTounding con- 

 ditions, inorganic and organic. We are still quite in the 

 dark about origins. Elimination originates nothing ; it 

 merely crowds out failures. Selection originates nothing; 

 • Lyell, " Principles," 11th ed., vol. ii., p. 253. 



