DARWINISM ATTACKED. 37 



fortuitous, fluctuating variability on which the whole great 

 structure of the selection theory is based. Yet any one's 

 common sense and his intuitive comprehension of what 

 life-and-death value is in an animal's battle with another, 

 with foreign enemies, or with inclement Nature, make 

 this objection of "no handle for natural selection in mis- 

 cellaneous slight variation" thoroughly appreciable. Polar 

 bears are probably descended from brown ; and their white 

 fur coat is probably an advantageous adaptation in their 

 life in the Arctic. But did the fortuitous appearance in his 

 coat of a spot of white hairs as large as a dollar or a pancake 

 give some ancient brown bear such an advantage in the 

 struggle for existence as to make him or her the fore- 

 runner of a new and better-adapted sort of bear? The 

 giraffe's long neck is very much worth while to it; it gets 

 leaves from the higher branches unattainable by the short- 

 necked animals who find food in the same range. But did a 

 millimetre or even an inch of extra neck appearing as 

 individual variation in an ancestral short-necked giraffe 

 kind give natural selection a handle with which to grind out 

 a new species ? The consideration of the usefulness of 

 slight variations too often leads to an argument for their 

 usefulness on the same grounds as sustain the belief that 

 the hound will never catch the hare which goes one-half as 

 fast as the dog. For each time the hound covers the given 

 stretch that lies between him and the hare at any given 

 moment the hare will be just one-half that distance in 

 advance and though the distance will get ever shorter and 

 shorter the hare will ever be one-half the last distance ahead. 

 So say the sophists. As a matter of fact the hound gets the 

 hare. 



Spencer's example of the femur of the whale is a striking 

 illustration of the reality of the absurdity connected with 

 the argument of change on a basis of the selection of in- 

 finitesimal differences. The femur of the whale, says 



