the theory of natural
selection itself, as I shall show at some length in the next volume.

[34] Of course adaptive modifications produced in the individual
lifetime, and not _inherited_, do not concern the question at all.
In this and the following paragraphs, therefore, "adaptations,"
"adaptive modifications," &c., refer exclusively to such as are
hereditary, i. e. phyletic.

* * * * *

A still more extravagant, and a still more unaccountable fallacy is the
one which represents it as following deductively from the theory of
natural selection itself, that all _hereditary_ characters are
"necessarily" due to natural selection. In other words, not only all
adaptive, but likewise all non-adaptive hereditary characters, it is
said, _must_ be due to natural selection. For non-adaptive characters
are taken to be due to "correlation of growth," in connexion with some
of the adaptive ones--natural selection being thus the _indirect_ means
of producing the former _wherever_ they may occur, on account of its
being the _direct_ and the _only_ means of producing the latter. Thus it
is deduced from the theory of natural selection itself,--1st, that the
principle of natural selection is the only possible cause of adaptive
modification: 2nd, that non-adaptive modifications can only occur in the
race as correlated appendages to the adaptive: 3rd, that, consequently,
natural selection is the only possible cause of modification, whether
adaptive or non-adaptive. Here again, therefore, we must observe that
none of these sweeping generalizations can possibly be justified by
deductive reasoning from the theory of natural selection itself. Any
attempt at such deductive reasoning must necessarily end in circular
reasoning, as I shall likewise show in the second volume, where this
whole "question of utility" will be thoroughly dealt with.

* * * * *

Once more, there is an important oversight very generally committed by
the followers of Darwin. For even those who avoid the fallacies above
mentioned often fail to perceive, that natural selection can only begin
to operate if the _degree_ of adaptation is already given as
sufficiently high to count for something in the struggle for
_existence_. Any adaptations which fall below this level of importance
cannot possibly have been produced by survival of the fittest. Yet the
followers of Darwin habitually speak o