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Moreover, it is a demonstrable impossibility to explain the origin of just those organs and members in the structure of organisms which are systematically the most significant and functionally the most important, by means of natural selection.
True, "inheritance of functionally produced modifications" is allowed to be the chief factor throughout the "higher stages of organic evolution," but it has very little to do in the lower; in these "the almost exclusive factor" is not heredity, or inheritance, but "survival of the fittest." Of course we know that Mr.
And this increment of value makes all the difference. It frequently happens, however, that one of the radical elements becomes functionally so subordinated to the other that it takes on the character of a grammatical element. A word like beautiful is an example of A + b, the -ful barely preserving the impress of its lineage.
These are a very small and functionally insignificant proportion of the vocabulary of language; at no time and in no linguistic province that we have record of do we see a noticeable tendency towards their elaboration into the primary warp and woof of language. They are never more, at best, than a decorative edging to the ample, complex fabric.
Pure species have of course their organs of reproduction in a perfect condition, yet when intercrossed they produce either few or no offspring. Hybrids, on the other hand, have their reproductive organs functionally impotent, as may be clearly seen in the state of the male element in both plants and animals; though the organs themselves are perfect in structure, as far as the microscope reveals.
Otherwise, as indeed so often happens, the beauty of one aspect may completely dominate the others; when the object either remains a pretty ornament perhaps, but is functionally dead; or else, if it keep this life, loses its unity in a rivalry of beautiful aspects. All these points are strikingly illustrated in architecture.
Moreover, all the great central ganglia, which give rise to movements in the limbs, were also eternally at rest. Thus one half of me was absent or functionally dead. This set me to thinking how much a man might lose and yet live. If I were unhappy enough to survive, I might part with my spleen at least, as many a dog has done, and grown fat afterwards.
So again, in formerly discussing certain morphological characters which are not functionally important, we have seen that they are often of the highest service in classification.
I have remarked in the first chapter but a long catalogue of facts which cannot be here given would be necessary to show the truth of the remark that the reproductive system is eminently susceptible to changes in the conditions of life; and to this system being functionally disturbed in the parents, I chiefly attribute the varying or plastic condition of the offspring.
Buffon erred rather on the side of ignoring functionally produced modifications than of insisting on them. The main agency with him is the direct action of the environment upon the organism.
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