BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION 75 
caves because their ancestors were adjusted to do without the use 
of eyes.”’! 
Another paper by H. F. Osborn of Columbia is of interest 
because it re-emphasizes the value of the theory of variation by 
“ organic selection ” formulated some years ago by Baldwin and 
himself in this country and by Lloyd Morgan in England. Bald- 
win gives this explanation: “It claims that it is possible for 
intelligent adaptations, or any sort of ‘modification’ made by the 
individuals of one generation, to set the direction of subsequent 
evolution, even though there be no direct inheritance of acquired 
characters from father to son.’ ? 
Osborn, in the paper cited, contends for law-abiding rather 
than fortuitous variations,? and formulates his own theory as 
follows: — 
The life and evolution of organisms continually center around the proc- 
esses which we term heredity, ontogeny, environment and selection; these 
have been inseparable and interacting from the beginning; a change intro- 
duced or initiated through any one of these factors causes a change in all. 
First, that while inseparable from the others, each process may in certain 
conditions become an initiative or leading factor; second, that in complex 
organisms one factor may at the same time be initiative to another group of 
characters, the inseparable action bringing about a continuously harmonious 
result.4 
An additional citation may well be made from a recent work by 
Professor Loeb of the Rockefeller Institute because of his recog- 
nized authority. Professor Loeb has endeavored to reduce all 
life to terms of the physical and chemical interaction.’ While 
discrediting the theory formulated by Fornier, that the results of 
muscular activity may be inherited by their effect on the central 
nervous system and through this on the germ plasm, he goes on to 
say: — 
If we thus deny the immediate influence of the central nervous system on 
the germ, and assume a chemical theory of heredity, it might still be possible 
that the central nervous system could influence heredity indirectly, in so far 
1 Fifty Years of Darwinism, pp. 183, 189. 
2 Story of the Mind, p. 34. Cf. Conn, Method of Evolution, pp. 306 ff.; also 
Thomson, Darwinism and Human Life, p. 169. 
3 Fifty Years of Darwinism, p. 225. 4 Ibid., p. 238. 
5 Especially in his Mechanistic Universe. 
