THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY 



this objection is a very subtle one. In one or another of its many 

 forms it has afforded the basis for most of the post-Darwinian criti- 

 cism of Darwin's work; nor do I hope to demonstrate its error, 

 at this late day, to any who have mastered the first four chapters 

 of the "Origin" without conviction; for he who does not succeed in 

 making Darwin's clear and simple words an occasion of his own 

 thinking, reminds one of the five brethren of a certain rich man 

 mentioned in history. 



If the individuals which, in each generation, make up a species 

 differ among themselves in innumerable characters, and yet tend, 

 on the whole, to be more like their parents than individuals taken 

 at random, and if, furthermore, the rate of increase of all living 

 things tends to outrun the means of support, the survival of the 

 fittest, and the gradual perfection of the adjustments of each species 

 are no more than might have been expected. 



Fifteen years before he published the "Origin," Darwin wrote to 

 Hooker as follows: "Heaven forfend me from Lamarck nonsense, 

 but I think I have found out the simple way in which species 

 become adapted to various ends " : although the assertion that 

 natural selection is dependent upon laws of variation, or causes of 

 variation, for its raw material denies, explicitly or by implication, 

 that he had found out, in natural selection, the simple means by 

 which species become adapted to the conditions of their life, for 

 we must look to these laws or causes for the real explanation of 

 the usefulness of the properties which natural selection picks out 

 and accumulates. 



It must not be supposed that the only advocates of this opinion 

 are natural theologians who are so short-sighted as to fear that, if 

 natural selection were admitted to be an explanation of the fitness 

 of living things, this might show that their fitness is not real fit- 

 ness; for while it has been made much of in what has been 

 supposed to be the interest of natural theology, it has also been 

 held by men of science who seek no alliance with the natural 

 theologians. In fact, one modern writer who tells us that this 

 reasoning has no value when used in their interest (Romanes, 

 " Darwin and after Darwin," I., p. 336), himself makes use of it 

 a few pages further on in the supposed interest of science ; 

 for he tells us that if the Lamarckian principles are in any 



