REMARKS ON NATURAL SELECTION. 355 



The identity of meaning above insisted on was, on 

 the face of it, almost as obscure as that between 

 " eveque and bishop." Yet we know that " eveque " is 

 " episc " and " bishop " " piscop," and that " episcopus " 

 is the Latin for bishop; the words, therefore, are really 

 one and the same, in spite of the difference in their 

 appearance. I think I can show, moreover, that Mr. 

 Darwin himself holds natural selection and the con- 

 ditions of existence to be one and the same thing. 

 For he writes, " in one sense," and it is hard to see any 

 sense but one in what follows, " the conditions of life 

 may be said not only to cause variability " (so that here 

 Mr. Darwin appears to support Lamarck's main thesis) 

 " either directly or indirectly, but likewise to include 

 natural selection ; for the conditions determine whether 

 this or that variety shall survive." * But later on we 

 find that " the expression of conditions of existence, so 

 often insisted upon by the illustrious Cuvier" (and 

 surely also by the illustrious Lamarck, though he calls 

 them " circonstances") "is fully embraced by the prin- 

 ciple of natural selection/' f So we see that the con- 

 ditions of life " include " natural selection, and yet the 

 conditions of existence " are fully embraced ly " natural 

 selection, which, I take it, is an enigmatic way of saying 

 that they are one and the same thing, for it is not until 

 two bodies absolutely coincide and occupy the same 

 space that the one can be said both to include and to 

 be embraced by the other. 



The difficulty, again, of understanding Mr. Darwin's 

 meaning is enhanced by his repeatedly writing of 

 * ' Origin of Species,' p. 107. f Ibid, p. 106. 



2 A 2 



