﻿Appendix II. 327 



In the first place, it must be evident that so soon as 

 we cease to be bound by any a priori deduction as to 

 natural selection being " the exclusive means of modifica- 

 tions," it ceases to be a matter of much concern to the theory of 

 natural selection in what proportion other means of modifi- 

 cation have been at work — especially when non-adaptive 

 modifications are concerned, and where these have refer- 

 ence to merely "specific characters," or modifications of 

 the most incipient kind, least generally diffused among 

 organic types, and representing the incidence of causes of 

 less importance than any others in the process of organic 

 evolution considered as a whole. Consequently, in the 

 second place, we find that Darwin nowhere displays any 

 solicitude touching the proportional number of specific char- 

 acters that may eventually prove to be due to causes other 

 than natural selection. He takes a much wider and 

 deeper view of organic evolution, and, having entirely 

 emancipated himself from the former conception of 

 species as the organic units, sees virtually no significance 

 in specific characters, except in so far as they are also 

 adaptive characters. 



Such, at all events, appears to me the obvious interpretation 

 of his writings when these are carefully read with a view to 

 ascertaining his ideas upon "Utilitarian doctrine: how far 

 true." And I make these remarks because it has been laid 

 to my charge, that in quoting such passages as the above I 

 have been putting " a strained interpretation " upon Darwin's 

 utterances : " such admissions," it is said, " Mr. Romanes 

 appears to me to treat as if wrung from a hostile witness V 

 But, from what has gone before, it ought to be apparent 

 that I take precisely the opposite view to that here imputed. 

 Far from deeming these and similar passages as " admissions 

 wrung from a hostile witness," and far from seeking 



x Mr. Thiselton Dyer in Nature, loc. cit. 



