LETTERS OF CHARLES DARWIN. 397 



tion is spoken of, variation is always implied. But I entirely agree 

 with your and Hooker's remark. 



Have you begun regularly to write your book on the antiquity of 

 man? 



I do not agree with your remark that I make Natural Selection do 

 too much work. You will perhaps reply that every man rides his 

 hobby-horse to death; and that I am in the galloping state. 



To C. Lyell. 



Torquay, Aug. 21st [1861]. 



I am pleased that you approve of Hutton's review. It seemed to 

 me to take a more philosophical view of the manner of judging the 

 question than any other review. The sentence you quote from it 

 seems very true, but I do not agree with the theological conclusion. 

 I think he quotes from Asa Gray, certainly not from me; but I have 

 neither A. Gray nor Origin with me. Indeed, I have over and over 

 again said in the Origin that Natural Selection does nothing without 

 variability; I have given a whole chapter on laws, and used the 

 strongest language how ignorant we are on these laws. But I agree 

 that I have somehow (Hooker says it is owing to my title) not made 

 the great and manifest importance of previous variability plain 

 enough. Breeders constantly speak of Selection as the one great means 

 of improvement; but of course they imply individual differences, and 

 this I should have thought would have been obvious to all in Natural 

 Selection; but it has not been so. 



I have just said that I cannot agree with 'which variations are 

 the effects of an unknown law, ordained and guided without doubt by 

 an intelligent cause on a preconceived and definite plan.' Will you 

 honestly tell me (and I should be really much obliged) whether you 

 believe that the shape of my nose (eheu!) was ordained and 'guided 

 by an intelligent cause?' By the selection of analogous and less dif- 

 ferences fanciers make almost generic differences in their pigeons; 

 and can you see any good reason why the Natural Selection of analo- 

 gous individual differences should not make new species? If you say 

 that God ordained that at some time and place a dozen slight varia- 

 tions should arise, and that one of them alone should be preserved in 

 the struggle for life and the other eleven should perish in the first or 

 few first generations, then the saying seems to me mere verbiage. It 

 comes to merely saying that everything that is, is ordained. 



Let me add another sentence. Why should you or I speak of 

 variation as having been ordained and guided, more than does an 

 astronomer, in discussing the fall of a meteoric stone? He would 

 simply say that it was drawn to our earth by the attraction of gravity, 



