began that, inasmuch as the race ultimately exhibits similar modifications to those which appear in the individual first subjected to the influences of a new habit, this has been brought about by a transforming rather than a selective influence in nature.

We have attempted to reply to those arguments which seek to unduly appreciate Natural Selection at the cost of transforming influences. It only remains to consider briefly the way in which the strict and logical significance of Natural Selection is lowered in order to reconcile it to the facts of nature.

In the first place, it is not unusual to find any selection which takes place in nature designated by the term "Natural Selection." We have an illustration of this mode of speech in Dr. Ray Lankester's explanation of the production of blind animals inhabiting dark caves. He rejects the Lamarckian explanation, and then proceeds to prove that the change is brought about by a process which he designates as "a Natural Selection."

It is not quite easy to say whether Dr. Ray Lankester wishes his readers to understand that "a Natural Selection" means an individual case of the general principle of Natural Selection; or whether he means a particular species or variety of a generic term of Natural Selection; or whether by "a Natural Selection" he simply means a selection which takes place in nature. If he means that any selection in nature is Natural Selection, that is not correct; for similar variants may be isolated for breeding purposes by other influences than that of life and death. If he means that there are many kinds of Natural Selection, that would only be to adopt several definitions of one term―a process not very conducive to clear reasoning. If he means to assert that this is an individual instance of Natural Selection, that assertion is not true; for Natural

Selection works by life and death, and in this case the isolation for breeding purposes takes place in consequence of the animals peaceably separating from one another. To say that this is an instance of Natural Selection is very much like saying that a pacific agreement to divide a given region between two forces is a species of internecine strife. I do not think that the explanation would bear investigation on the principles of Pure Darwinism; but if we grant that the process was that described by Dr. Lankester, it would be a selection in nature which was emphatically not Natural Selection.

Another way of modifying the meaning of the phrase, is to treat Natural Selection as though it secured the survival of the fittest, quite irrespective of the way in which the variations were produced, and even as securing the survival of the best of those variants, which had been produced by transforming influences. But in this case the transmutation might take place apart from any principle of selection, and an unnecessary amount of risk to the survival of the race would result from the introduction of selection by life and death. Such modifications of the meaning of the phrase either testify to the existence of spheres in nature, in which the principle of Natural Selection properly so called does not exist, or must be understood to mean that the Natural Selection of the world of nature is not the Natural Selection which is expounded so eloquently and so definitely in the descriptions of the theory.

"Natural Selection," says Dr. Weismann, "does not deal with qualitative but quantitative changes in the individual, and the latter are always present." ”米 this means that Natural Selection does not produce

If

any modification which alters the quality of an organism, it is an admission that distinctive qualities are the product of some other influence. And surely all quality cannot be resolved into quantity without removing all the distinctive meaning attached to those terms. It is surely legitimate, for example, to treat the perfume of flowers as a quality of the plant. The flowers which emit no scent and the flowers which load the air with perfume have surely distinctive qualities. But if so, the perfume of flowers cannot have been produced by Natural Selection but by an independent transforming influence. Or are we to understand that all modifications of structures are mere matters of quantity? Such a definition seems to me to overlook Mr. Herbert Spencer's distinction between growth and development. Growth is a mere increase of size; development is an increase in the complexity of the structure. It seems to me that we should be perfectly justified in calling the former a quantitative and the latter a qualitative modification. But if we accept this definition, then the dictum of Dr. Weismann would deny to Natural Selection the power of producing that development without which progressive modification of structure would be impossible. Or does he mean to say that Natural Selection only acts through selecting quantitative excellence, as, for example, the flowers which emit the sweetest or the most penetrating perfume? But if so, some other influence, not Natural Selection, must have produced the perfume.

In the preceding section of this work it has been shown that if we were acquainted with no special reasons for doubting that Natural Selection was a law of nature, there would still be good reason to believe that it had taken no part in the modification of species. The stability of species and the extinction of species take place apart from Natural Selection; while they present especial diffi

culties to the theory of Natural Selection. The correlated variation of a structure of co-ordinated parts is the result of any cause which may modify one of the parts; it is in no way the special ally of Natural Selection; and Natural Selection, acting alone, cannot produce similar results. If we grant the assertion that only birth variations can be inherited, we find that some birth variations do not require the principle of selection to assist them in bringing about the transmutation of species; while, in other cases, there is a selection in nature which is not Natural Selection. The transforming influence of changed conditions and the selective influence of Natural Selection, in the proper sense of that term, cannot co-operate and cannot co-exist in the world of nature as it stands revealed to human experience and experiment. We have arrived at the conclusion that the transmutation of species is brought about by a process which is not Natural Selection. We have shown that the arguments which have been used to depreciate transforming influences and to unduly appreciate Natural Selection, are invalid. We have seen that the meaning of Natural Selection has been modified in order to meet the difficulties which beset the logical and consistent statement of the theory. We have shown that if the process of Natural Selection could go on contemporaneously with the process of transformation, it could not compete with that cheaper and more expeditious method. But a law of nature which is excluded from many spheres of organic change, which cannot compete with other processes,-which, in a word, never comes into action, may surely be dismissed as a fanciful creation of the human imagination rather than welcomed as the palpable and dominant principle in the world of reality. It is at best an article of scientific faith; it is not a demonstrated law of nature,