Habit and instinct / by C. Lloyd Morgan.

  • C. Lloyd Morgan
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Habit and instinct / by C. Lloyd Morgan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    332/402 page 318
    o modification start at a higher level, so to speak, and thus enable it to be carried a step further. The latter will force it to start at a lower level, and prevent its going so far. If natural selection take place at all, we may well believe that it would do so under such circumstances.* And it would work along the lines laid down for it in adaptive modification. Modification would lead; variation follow in its wake. It is not surprising that for long we believed modification to be transmitted as hereditary variation. Such an interpretation of the facts is the simpler and more obvious. But simple and obvious interpretations are not always correct. And if, on closer examination in the light of fuller knowledge, they are found to present grave difficulties, a less simple and less obvious interpretation may claim our provisional acceptance. In his recent paper on Germinal Selection, Prof. Weismann says: t “I am fain to relinquish myself to the hope that now after another explanation has been found, a reconciliation and unification of the hostile views is not so very distant, and that then we can continue our work together on the newly laid foundations.” As one to whom Prof. Weismann alludes as having expressed the opinion that the Lamarckian principle must be admitted as a working hypothesis, I am now ready to relinquish myself also to the same hope. Germinal selection does not convince me, though it may be regarded as a suggestive hypothesis; and, assuredly, I am not convinced by the argument that because in certain cases, such as the changes in the chitinous parts of the skeleton of insects and Crustacea, and in the teeth of mammals, use and disuse can have played no part, therefore in no other * Prof. Weismann’s “germinal selection,” if a vera causa, would be a co-operating factor, and assist in producing the requisite variations. t Monist, loc. cit., p. 290.
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