adaptation here comes about WITHOUT THE COOPERATION OF THE LAMARCKIAN
PRINCIPLE. This conclusion once established, however, we have no reason to
refer the thousands of cases of harmonious adaptation, which occur in
exactly the same way among other animals or plants, to a principle, the
ACTIVE INTERVENTION OF WHICH IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF SPECIES IS NOWHERE
PROVED. WE DO NOT REQUIRE IT TO EXPLAIN THE FACTS, AND THEREFORE WE MUST
NOT ASSUME IT.

The fact of coadaptation, which was supposed to furnish the strongest
argument against the principle of selection, in reality yields the clearest
evidence in favour of it. We MUST assume it, BECAUSE NO OTHER POSSIBILITY
OF EXPLANATION IS OPEN TO US, AND BECAUSE THESE ADAPTATIONS ACTUALLY EXIST,
THAT IS TO SAY, HAVE REALLY TAKEN PLACE. With this conviction I attempted,
as far back as 1894, when the idea of germinal selection had not yet
occurred to me, to make "harmonious adaptation" (coadaptation) more easily
intelligible in some way or other, and so I was led to the idea, which was
subsequently expounded in detail by Baldwin, and Lloyd Morgan, and also by
Osborn, and Gulick as ORGANIC SELECTION. It seemed to me that it was not
necessary that all the germinal variations required for secondary
variations should have occurred SIMULTANEOUSLY, since, for instance, in the
case of the stag, the bones, muscles, sinews, and nerves would be incited
by the increasing heaviness of the antlers to greater activity in THE
INDIVIDUAL LIFE, and so would be strengthened. The antlers can only have
increased in size by very slow degrees, so that the muscles and bones may
have been able to keep pace with their growth in the individual life, until
the requisite germinal variations presented themselves. In this way a
disharmony between the increasing weight of the antlers and the parts which
support and move them would be avoided, since time would be given for the
appropriate germinal variations to occur, and so to set agoing the
HEREDITARY variation of the muscles, sinews, and bones. ("The Effect of