The inadequacy of "natural selection" / by Herbert Spencer ; reprinted from the Contemporary review.

  • Spencer, Herbert, 1820-1903.
Date:
[1893]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The inadequacy of "natural selection" / by Herbert Spencer ; reprinted from the Contemporary review. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/79 (page 161)
    survive, and, among descendants, to leave some similarly endowed or more endowed, wlio again transmit the variation with, in some cases, increase. Clearly this highly useful power may be developed by natural selection. So also, for like reasons, may quickness of vision and delicacy of hearing. Though it may be remarked in passing that since this extra sense-endowment, serving to give early alarm, profits the herd as a whole, which takes the alarm from one individual, selection of it is not so easy, unless it occurs in a conquering stag. But now suppose that one member of the herd—perhaps because of • more efficient teeth, perhaps by greater muscularity of stomach, per- haps by secretion of more appropriate gastric juices—is enabled to eat and digest a not uncommon plant which the others refuse. This peculiarity may, if food is scarce, conduce to better self* maintenance, and better fostering of young, if the individual is a hind. But unless this plant is abundant, and the advantage consequently great, the advantages which other members of the herd gain from other slight variations may be equivalent. This one has unusual agility and leaps a chasm which others balk at. That one develops longer hair in winter, and resists the cold better. Another has a skin less irritated by flies, and can graze without so much interruption. Here is one which has an unusual power of detecting food under the snow ; and there is one which shows extra sagacity in the choice of a shelter from wind and rain. That the variation giving the ability to eat a plant before unutilised, may become a trait of the herd, and eventually of a variety, it is needful that the individual in which it occurs shall have more descendants, or better descendants, or both, than have the various other individuals severally having their small superiorities. If these other individuals severally profit by their small superiorities, and transmit them to equally large numbers of offspring, no increase of the variation in question can take place : it must soon be cancelled. Whether in the “ Origin of Species ” Mr. Darwin has recognised this fact, I do not remember, but he has certainly done it by implication in his “ Animals and Plants under Domestication.” Speaking of variations in domestic animals, he there says that, “Any particular variation would generally be lost by crossing, reversion, and the acci- dental destruction of the varying individuals, unless carefully preserved by man ” (vol. ii. 292). That which survival of the fittest does in cases like the one I have instanced is to keep all faculties up to the mark, by •destroying such as have faculties in some respect below the mark ; and it can produce development of some one faculty only if that faculty is predominantly important. It seems to me that many naturalists have practically lost sight of this, and assume that natural selection will increase any advantageous trait. Certainly a view now widely accepted assumes as much. The consideration of this view, to which the foregoing paragraph is