Habit and instinct / by C. Lloyd Morgan.

  • Morgan, C. Lloyd (Conwy Lloyd), 1852-1936.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    of the race through natural selection is a slow process, it is a very sure one. He contends that the organic stability wrought into the race by natural selection is more per- manently valuable, less at the mercy of merely temporary changes of conditions, than that which is liable to frequent modification through transmission. And he further con- tends that in individual plasticity the organism possesses all that is required to enable it to meet such temporary changes of environment as are likely to occur. Thus both sides claim for their own views certain general organic advantages; and both are quite clear that had they the ordering of the organic world they would unhesitatingly carry out their own principles for the advantage of the organisms under their control! Now all this is very interesting, and affords con- siderable scope for ingenuity. But it does not touch the question at issue; and this is—not which method is apparently the most advantageous, not which method we should have adopted, had the work of creation been en- trusted to our care, but which has been adopted by nature. For let us suppose that the transmissionist is successful in showing that his method is for the greater advantage of the race, and is that which best furthers organic progress; and let us further suppose him to contend that even on the natural selection principles of his opponents this advan- tageous method would itself be established by the elimina- tion of less advantageous methods. The non-transmissionist will reply, first, that natural selection can only lead to the survival of such variations as are within the range of organic possibility, and the transmission of characters acquired during individual life by, say, brain tissue to the germinal cells, seems to be, as he contends, an organic im- possibility ; and secondly, that the question is after all one of fact. Has natural selection, as a matter of observation, u