The Theory of Natural Selection. 275 
second volume, where this whole “ question of utility” 
will be thoroughly dealt with. 
Once more, there is an important oversight very 
generally committed by the followers of Darwin. For 
even those who avoid the fallacies above mentioned 
often fail to perceive, that natural selection can only 
begin to operate if the degree of adaptation is already 
given as sufficiently high to count for something in the 
struggle for existence. Any adaptations which fall 
below this level of importance cannot possibly have 
been produced by survival of the fittest. Yet the 
followers of Darwin habitually speak of adaptative 
characters, which iv their own opinion are subservient 
merely to comfort or convenience, as having been 
produced by such means. Clearly this is illogical ; 
for it belongs to the essence of Darwin’s theory to 
suppose, that natural selection can have no jurisdiction 
beyond the line where structures or instincts already 
present a sufficient degree of adaptational value to 
increase, in some measure, the expectation of life on 
the part of their possessors. We cannot speak of 
adaptations as due to natural selection, without 
thereby affirming that they present what I have else- 
where termed a “selection value.” 
Lastly, as a mere matter of logical definition, it is 
well-nigh self-evident that the theory of natural 
selection is a theory of the origin, and cumulative 
development, of adaptations, whether these be distinc- 
tive of species, or of genera, orders, families, classes, 
and sub-kingdoms. It is only when the adaptations 
happen to be distinctive of the first (or lowest) of these 
wi 
