6o GERMINAL SELECTION. 



the guidance of va riation by utility^ which we ha 

 considered to-day. For without primary constituer 

 of the germ, whether they are called as I call thei 

 determinants, or something else, germinal selectio 

 or guidance of variation by personal selection, is ii 

 possible; for where all units are alike there can 

 no struggle, no preference of the best. And yet su< 

 a guidance of variation exists and demands its e 

 planation, and the early assumptions of a "definite 

 directed variation" such as Nageli and Askenasy ma 

 are insufficient, for the reason that they posit on 

 internal forces as the foundations thereof, and 1; 

 cause, as I have attempted to show, the harmony of t 

 direction of variation with the requirements of t 

 conditions of life subsists and represents the ride 

 to be solved. The degree of adaptiveness which 

 part possesses itself evokes the direction of variatii 

 of that part. 



This proposition seems to me to round off the whc 

 theory of selection and to give to it that degree of i 

 ner perfection and completeness which is necessary 

 protect it against the many doubts which have gat 

 ered around it on all sides like so many lowerii 

 thunder-clouds. The moment variation is determin 

 substantially though not exclusively by the adapti-v 

 ness itself, all these doubts fall to the ground, wi 

 one exception, that of the utility of the initial stej 

 But just this objection is the least weighty. Witho 

 doubt the theory requires that the initial steps of 

 variation should also have selective value; otherwi 

 personal selection and hence germinal selection cor 

 not set in. Since, however, as I have before point 

 out, in no case can we pretend to a judgment regai 

 ing the selective value of a modification, or have a 



