286 CREATION BY LAW. 



ined to do any harm. It is simply not necessary, and 

 is therefore withheld ! We ought surely to have been 

 told how this fact is consistent with beauty being " an 

 end in itself," and with the statement of its being 

 given to natural objects " for its own sake." 



How new Forms are produced l>y Variation and 

 Selection. 



Let us now consider another of the popular objec- 

 tions which the Duke of Argyll thus sets forth : 



a Mr. Darwin does not pretend to have discovered 

 any law or rule, according to which new Forms have 

 been born from old Forms. He does not hold that 

 outward conditions, however changed, are sufficient to 

 account for them. . . His theory seems to be far 

 better than a mere theory to be an established scien- 

 tific truth in so far as it accounts, in part at least, 

 for the success and establishment and spread of new 

 Forms when tliey have arisen. But it does not even 

 suggest the law under which, or by or according to 

 which, such new Forms are introduced. Natural Se- 

 lection can do nothing, except with the materials 

 presented to its hands. It cannot select except among 

 the things open to selection. . . Strictly speaking, 

 therefore, Mr. Darwin's theory is not a theory on 

 the Origin of Species at all, but only a theory on the 

 causes which lead to the relative success or failure 

 of such new forms as may be born into the world." 

 (" Reign of Law," p. 230.) 



In this, and many other passages in his work, the 



