No Struggle for Existence, No Natural Selection

and formation of its rocks, deserts, plains, mountains and elevated plateaus, from the wealth or want of vegetation with its lights and shadows, from its climatic conditions, even from the food which it furnishes, is constantly exerting and raining down modifying influences upon the species that by its migration has newly come under it, and is changing in a uniform manner all the individuals of the species, so that no single individual can escape from its established specific bond.Lamarck held, and rightly held, that under the new environment into which a migrated species was brought certain changes in its habits must take place, so as to call into play new functional activities, and entail the suspension of some old functions.Thus certain structural elements would be developed, while others from want of use would become atrophied and dwindle into rudimentary proportions.It was his belief also, whether rightly or wrongly I cannot say, that this modifying potency of changed external conditions was sufficient to account for the differentiation of all living organisms into the diverse forms which now exist upon the surface of the globe.No reasonable doubt, in my opinion, can be enter- tained that to the modifying influence of changed external conditions are due all the differentiations that exist between the several species that have been derived from a common ancestor, to wit, the generic form which was the origin of the family to which all the related species belong

Biology · Darwinism · Epistemology · Natural (archaeology) · Natural selection · Selection (genetic algorithm) · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Evolution and Science Education · Philosophy