WALLACE ON "DARWINISM." 83 



living things, and there is abundance of opening for discovery 

 with respect tb the laws of matter and the laws of life ; bnt mat- 

 ter and life must first be given : this is sufficiently obvious ; but 

 it is worth noting, because there is sometimes a tendency to make 

 a confusion between creation and the laws of created things ; 

 whereas it is obvious that creation is one thing, and the law gov- 

 erning created things is quite another. But (2) as the original 

 existence of living things is a mystery, so also is the reproduction 

 of them. The continuity of life on the earth's surface, insured in 

 various ways more or less resembling each other, and all agreeing 

 in this, that there is apparently no tendency in vital power to de- 

 generate or wear itself out in the course of ages, is, as it were, a 

 standing mystery of creation. The scientific man has nothing to 

 do with this mystery ; to him it is simply a fact or phenomenon ; 

 but he who tries to go beyond phenomena and to get at the cause 

 behind them will recognize reproduction as being etiologically 

 equivalent to continuous creation. The great feature, however, 

 of the principle of natural selection is (3) the occurrence of varia- 

 tions. Mr. Wallace lays great stress on the abundance of the 

 variations which occur in nature, and the corresponding impor- 

 tance of this element in the Darwinian theory ; and he is obviously 

 wise in doing so. But it is well to observe that it is impossible to 

 regard variations either on the one hand as a necessary feature of 

 reproduction, or on the other as simply fortuitous. With regard 

 to the latter supposition it is, certainly, difficult to conceive of 

 chance as being a principal factor, say, in the production of a 

 horse, to say nothing of a man. But even the former supposition 

 is not quite an easy one : it is difficult to see why variations capa- 

 ble of being made permanent should occur, and why (if there be 

 offspring at all) the offspring should not be exactly like the parent ; 

 in not a few cases this seems to be the law of living things. What 

 I wish to point out, however, is this, that from the etiological 

 point of view there ought to be a cause for variations as well as 

 for other phenomena ; and that, therefore, when we use the phe- 

 nomenon of variations as a part of the machinery of natural selec- 

 tion, we do not get rid of the task of inquiring, as philosophers, 

 why those useful variations occurred. In fact, in this as in many 

 other instances, what is done is to shift the process one stage back- 

 ward, but to leave the question of the primary cause very much 

 where it was. Variations are abundant, says the student of natu- 

 ral history, and advantageous variations are preserved and made 

 permanent by the process of natural selection : let it be granted. 

 But the philosopher may still say : How comes it that advan- 

 tageous variations should occur ? Must not this occurrence be the 

 result of some pre-established principle or law of development ? 

 Take the case of the horse, which Mr. Wallace has dwelt upon 



