Logically contrasted with the modifications of the tissues, dependent on organic plasticity, are the _variations_ which arise from the nature and constitution of the reproductive cells. How they arise cannot here be discussed. But they are, it is believed, subject to the influence of natural selection, which has guided them, throughout the ages of organic evolution, in the directions they have taken; disadvantageous variations having been eliminated, and favourable variations surviving in the struggle for existence. Such modes of behaviour as are congenital and are due to hereditary transmission are therefore the outcome of variations which have been selected generation after generation. And the fit adjustment of this congenital behaviour to the needs of life is termed _adaptation_. It is here assumed that modifications of behaviour in one generation are not inherited, and therefore contribute nothing to the store of adaptive behaviour in the next generation.
It must not, however, be supposed that the provisional acceptance of this conclusion involves the denial of all connection of any sort between accommodation and adaptation. When we remember that plastic modification and germinal variation have been working together, in close association, all along the line of organic evolution to reach the common goal of adjustment to the circumstances of life, it is difficult to believe that they have been throughout the whole process altogether independent of each other. Granted that acquired modifications, as such, are not directly inherited, they may none the less afford the conditions under which _coincident variations_ escape elimination. By coincident variations I mean those the direction of which coincides with that taken by modification. The survival of an animal depends on its adjustment to the circumstances of its life, no matter how this adjustment is secured. And this survival would in the long run be better secured, we may suppose, where the two methods of adjustment were coincident and not conflicting;[15] just as a man who not only acquires by his own exertions a fortune but also inherits one, is better off than his neighbour, of equal business capacity, who is entirely dependent on his own exertions. The inheritance of a small capital may, indeed, make just the difference between success and failure. Even with it, if he had no power of acquiring more, he might remain a poor man. Inheritance and acquisition combined may best lead to survival in competition. Thus modification may supply the conditions under which coincident variations are favoured, and, given time, to reach step by step, through natural selection, a fully adaptive level. If this be so we may accept many of the facts adduced by the transmissionist in favour of the direct inheritance of acquired characters, and at the same time interpret them on selectionist principles.