Characters as Adaptive and Specific. 167 



any number of other peculiar characters of a non- 

 adaptive kind, these merely indifferent peculiarities 

 are supposed to hang, as it were, on the peg supplied 

 by the one adaptive peculiarity ; it is the latter which 

 conditions the species, and so furnishes an oppor- 

 tunity for any number of the former to supervene. 

 But without the evolution of at least one adaptive 

 character there could have been no distinct species, 

 and therefore no merely adventitious characters as 

 belonging to that species. I will call this the 

 Huxleyan doctrine, because Professor Huxley is its 

 most express and most authoritative supporter. 



The second and more extensive doctrine I will call, 

 for the same reason, the Wallacean doctrine. This 

 is, as already stated, that it follows deductively from 

 the theory of natural selection, that not only all 

 species, but even all the distinctive characters of every 

 species, must necessarily be due to natural selection ; 

 and, therefore, can never be other than themselves 

 useful, or, at the least, correlated with some other 

 distinctive characters which are so. 



Here, however, I should like to remark paren- 

 thetically, that in choosing Professor Huxley and 

 Mr. Wallace as severally representative of the doctrines 

 in question, I earnestly desire to avoid any appearance 

 of discourtesy towards such high authorities. 



I am persuaded — as I shall hereafter seek to show 

 Darwin was persuaded — that the doctrine of utility as 

 universal where species are concerned, is, in both the 

 above forms, unsound. But it is less detrimental 

 in its Huxleyan than in its Wallacean form, be- 

 cause it does not carry the erroneous deduction to 

 so extreme a point. Therefore let us first consider 



