ORGANIC POLARITY AND MUTATION 103 



It is well known that Darwin did not attach any very great 

 importance to the existence of 'sports,' and that his doctrine 

 of 'natural selection' relied in the main on the constant occurrence 

 of minute individual variations in all directions in the different 

 representatives of species, some of which would be more and some 

 less ' useful ' for their possessors in their struggle for existence : 

 leading in this way through repeated processes of multiplication 

 and descent to the gradual extinction of those possessing the least 

 useful quahties, and, on the other hand, as Herbert Spencer termed 

 it, to " survival of the fittest." 



Some very fundamental objections have for a long time been 

 raised against the adequacy of these particular views to account 

 for the origin of new species, and such objections have been 

 gathering weight during recent years. Thus, it was contended, 

 even as far back as 1871 by St. George Mivart,' that, among the 

 minute individual variations which arise, many would have no 

 utility for the species ; and that the incipient stages of a possibly 

 useful variation could not be seized upon and developed by a 

 process of ' natural selection,' so that these incipient variations 

 would be liable to be swamped by crossing or to disappear by 

 atavism. 



The Amei'ican investigators, Packard, Cope, and Hyatt also 

 dwell upon the inadequacy of Natural Selection as a cause of 

 Variation. According to Packard it comes in as a cause of the 

 preservation or extinction of forms that have arisen in other 

 ways.'^ And as Cope says, " A selection cannot be the cause of 

 those alternatives from which it selects. The alternatives must 

 be presented before the selection can commence." 3 



Then again, looking at the question from another point of 

 view, it has been said by J. T. Cunningham •» that the theory 

 of natural selection is " only a theory of the origin of adapta- 

 tions," while it is contended that "there is scarcely a single 

 instance in which a specific character has been shown to be 

 useful, to be adaptive." Bateson dwells upon a similar point of 

 view when he says,' "as Darwin and many others have often 



» " Genesis of Species," Chap. II. 



= " Life of Lamarck," 1901, p. 391. This book is a storehouse of facts and 

 references bearing on Neo-Lamarckism. 



3 " The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution," 1896, p. 474. 



* Quoted by H. Spencer, loc. cit, p. 565 ; but see his work on " Sexual 

 Dimorphism in the Animal Kingdom," igoo, pp. 8-11. 



s " Material for the Study of Variation," 1894, P- "• 



