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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XLVII 



and, surviving numberless changes of ritual, creed and 

 theology, has stamped itself indelibly upon religious ex- 

 pression everywhere. 



The whole subject of organic conservatism is so vast 

 and so little understood as to be far beyond satisfac- 

 tory treatment within the limits of such a paper as the 

 present one. An extensive correlation of the mass of 

 facts already in our possession and the discovery of a 

 multitude of new ones will be necessary in order to for- 

 mulate laws of phylogeny with any degree of accuracy. 

 The essential point in the whole matter is the indica- 

 tion that evolution of animals and plants is not a ran- 

 dom and fortuitous process, dependent on the caprice of 

 external, inorganic nature, but that it is subject every- 

 where to certain definite and discoverable laws. Such a 

 point of view, of course, is essentially an orthogenetic one 

 and emphasizes the importance of the evolving organism 

 rather than the creative power of the environment. By 

 establishing the essential uniformity of vital processes 

 everywhere it also tends to elevate biology from a mere 

 subsidiary of the physical sciences to an independent 

 position of its own. 



Summary 



1. The construction of a natural classification of organ- 

 isms is made possible only by the fact that certain char- 

 acters of every individual are more conservative and less 

 subject to variation than others during evolutionary 

 development. 



2. The explanation of conservatism propounded by the 

 theory of natural selection is unsatisfactory since, so far 

 as we are able to determine, characters which are most 

 firmly fixed are in general those of least importance for 

 survival. 



3. From a study of phylogeny it is possible to formu- 

 late certain general principles of conservatism which 

 are valid throughout more or less extensive groups of 

 organisms. 



