a factor, the inheritance of those modifications of structure caused by modifications of function. Eventually, among creatures of high organization, this factor became an important one; and I think there is reason to conclude that, in the case of the highest of creatures, civilized men, among whom the kinds of variation which affect survival are too multitudinous to permit easy selection of any one, and among whom survival of the fittest is greatly interfered with, it has become the chief factor: such aid as survival of the fittest gives, being usually limited to the

preservation of those in whom the totality of the faculties has been most favourably moulded by functional changes. Of course this sketch of the relations among the factors must be taken as in large measure a speculation. We are now too far removed from the beginnings of life to obtain data for anything more than tentative conclusions respecting its earliest stages; especially in the absence of any clue to the mode in which multiplication, first agamogenetic and then gamogenetic, was initiated. But it has seemed to me not amiss to present this general conception, by way of showing how the deductive interpretation

harmonizes with the several inferences reached by induction. In his article on Evolution in the Encyclop??dia Britannica, Professor

Huxley writes as follows:??? ???How far ???natural selection??? suffices for the production of species remains to be seen. Few can doubt that, if not the whole cause, it is a very

important factor in that operation... On the evidence of pal??ontology, the evolution of many existing forms of animal life from their predecessors is no longer an hypothesis, but an historical fact; it is only the nature of the physiological factors to which that evolution is due which is still open to discussion.???

with these phiages i may fitly join a remark made in the admirable address Prof. Huxley delivered before unveiling the statue of Mr. Darwin in the Museum at South Kensington. Deprecating the supposition that an authoritative sanction was given by the ceremony to the current ideas

concerning organic evolution, he said that ???science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.??? Along with larger motives, one motive which has joined in prompting the foregoing articles, has been the desire to point out that already among biologists, the beliefs concerning the origin of species have hiumed too much the character of a creed; and that while becoming settled they have been narrowed. So far from further broadening that broader view which Mr. Darwin reached as he grew older, his followers appear to have retrograded towards a more restricted view than he ever expressed. Thus there seems

occasion for recognizing the warning uttered by Prof. Huxley, as not uncalled for. Whatever may be thought of the arguments and conclusions set forth in this article and the preceding one, they will perhaps serve to show that it is as yet far too soon to close the inquiry concerning the causes of organic

evolution. Note. [the following phiages formed part of a preface to the small volume in which the foregoing essay re-appeared. I append them here as they cannot

now be conveniently prefixed.] Though the direct bearings of the arguments contained in this Essay are biological, the argument contained in its first half has indirect bearings upon Psychology, Ethics, and Sociology. My belief in the profound importance of these indirect bearings, was originally a chief prompter to .