Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 70.djvu/375

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
CIVOLOGY—A SUGGESTION
371

are progressive in character—the organic process from the principle of variability, the super-organic process from the principle of utility. In each case the progressive action of these intrinsic principles is conscribed and restricted by extrinsic conditions—variability by environmental conditions, utility by circumstantial conditions. In each case also the interaction of intrinsic principles and extrinsic conditions is directed and controlled by factors which are neither intrinsic nor extrinsic, but rather intermediate in character—the interaction of variability and environment by selection, the interaction of utility and circumstance by evaluation. Finally, both processes are arrested and established to some extent by the influence of other intrinsic principles that are conservative in character, the organic process by heredity, the super-organic process by imitation. But enough of this, a parallelism pushed too far comes dangerously near an analogy. In another paper I shall endeavor to show in what sense the suggested principles of super-organic development are subsequent to the known principles of organic evolution.