vival and of leaving offspring than those who do not possess it. If
it is harmful to the individual natural selection will soon bring about its
elimination. But if the new variation is neither harmful nor useful there
seems no reason why it should not persist.

In this way we avoid a difficulty that beset the older view. For on that
view no new character could be developed except by the piling up of minute
variations through the action of natural selection. Consequently any
character found in animals and plants must be supposed to be of some
definite use to the individual. Otherwise it could not have developed
through the action of natural selection. But there are plenty of characters
to which it is exceedingly difficult to ascribe any utility, and the
ingenuity of the supporters of this view has often been severely taxed to
account for their existence. On the more modern view this difficulty is
avoided. The origin of a new variation is independent of natural {143}
selection, and provided that it is not directly harmful there is no reason
why it should not persist. In this way we are released from the burden of
discovering a utilitarian motive behind all the multitudinous characters of
living organisms. For we now recognise that the function of natural
selection is selection and not creation. It has nothing to do with the
formation of the new variation. It merely decides whether it is to survive
or to be eliminated.

One of the arguments made use of by supporters of the older view is that
drawn from the study of adaptation. Animals and plants are as a rule
remarkably well adapted to living the life which their surroundings impose
upon them, and in some cases this adaptation is exceedingly striking.
Especially is this so in the many instances of what is called protective
coloration, where the animal comes to resemble its surroundings so closely
that it may reasonably be supposed to cheat even the keenest sighted enemy.
Surely, we are told, such perfect adaptation could hardly have arisen
through the mere survival of chance sports. Surely there must be some
guiding hand moulding the species into the required shape. The argument is
an old one. For John Ray that guiding hand was the superior wisdom of the
Creator: for the modern Darwinian it is Natural Selection controlling the
direction of variation. Mendelism certainly offers no suggestion of any
such controlling force. It interprets the {144} variations of living forms
i