e is imperfect, and is not a good substitute for
reason and observation.

Again, much of the perfection of instinct is due to the extreme severity
of the selection during its development, any failure involving
destruction. The chick which cannot break the eggshell, the caterpillar
that fails to suspend itself properly or to spin a safe cocoon, the bees
that lose their way or that fail to store honey, inevitably perish. So
the birds that fail to feed and protect their young, or the butterflies
that lay their eggs on the wrong food-plant, leave no offspring, and the
race with imperfect instincts perishes. Now, during the long and very
slow course of development of each organism, this rigid selection at
every step of progress has led to the preservation of every detail of
structure, faculty, or habit that has been necessary for the
preservation of the race, and has thus gradually built up the various
instincts which seem so marvellous to us, but which can yet be shown to
be in many cases still imperfect. Here, as everywhere else in nature, we
find comparative, not absolute perfection, with every gradation from
what is clearly due to imitation or reason up to what seems to us
perfect instinct--that in which a complex action is performed without
any previous experience or instruction.[217]

_Concluding Remarks._

Having now passed in review the more important of the recent objections
to, or criticisms of, the theory of natural selection, we have arrived
at the conclusion that in no one case have the writers in question been
able materially to diminish its importance, or to show that any of the
laws or forces to which they appeal can act otherwise than in strict
subordination to it. The direct action of the environment as set forth
by Mr. Herbert Spencer, Dr. Cope, and Dr. Karl Semper, even if we admit
that its effects on the individual are transmitted by inheritance, are
so small in comparison with the amount of spontaneous variation of every
part of the organism that they must be quite overshadowed by the latter.
And if such direct action may, in some cases, have initiated certain
organs or outgrowths, these must from their very first beginnings have
been subject to variation and natural selection, and their further
development have been almost wholly due to these ever-present and
powerful causes. The same remark applies to the views of Professor
Geddes on the laws of growth which have determined certain essential
feat