n, 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 assumed
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 passages 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 set forth the argument; and it now prompts me to re-issue it
in permanent form.

Though mental phenomena of many kinds, and especially of the simpler
kinds, are explicable only as resulting from the natural selection of
favourable variations; yet there are, I believe, still more numerous
mental phenomena, including all those of any considerable complexity,
which cannot be explained otherwise than as results of the inheritance
of functionally-produced modifications. What theory of psychological
evolution is espoused, thus depends on acceptance or rejection of the
doctrine that not only in the individual, but in the successions of
individuals, use and disuse of parts produce respectively increase and
decrease of them.

Of course there are involved the conceptions we form of the genesis and
nature of our higher emotions; and, by implication, the conceptions we
form of our moral intuitions. If functionally-produced modifications are
inheritable, then the mental associations habitually produced in
individuals by experiences of the relations between actions an