CHAPTER III. 
ORGANIC EVOLUTION NOT AIDED BY NATURAL 
SELECTION. 
“A spoke in the wheel.” 
When I assert that Organic Evolution has not been 
aided by Natural Selection, I mean that the attempt 
to imagine the process of Organic Evolution has not been 
assisted by the explanations of certain phenomena offered 
by the advocates of the theory of Natural Selection ; and 
that in some respects Natural Selection has deprived us of 
what used to be considered as proofs of Organic Evolution. 
In order to understand this, it may be well to remember 
that the arguments in favour of Organic Evolution may 
be resolved into three classes : i. Those which go to show 
that a process of gradual modification must have taken 
place ; 2. Those which show that one species or type of 
organic life has been developed into a higher one, struc 
turally and functionally ; 3. Those which tend to show 
that an organ or an organism once structurally perfect and 
functionally active, has been degraded into one less struc 
turally perfect and less functionally active. 
Now, in stating the argument for Organic Evolution as 
against fixity of species, apart from Natural Selection, 
these arguments do not at all clash. An especially strong 
argument for the transmutation of species as against 
the fixity of species is found in the modification of struc 
ture, to which reference is made under the argument from 
morphology, or the science of form. The argument from