Reduction of the Fortuitous 179 



in mankind, but it is possible that the implicit organ- 

 ism or germ-cell is unconsciously "experimenting" 

 with its material as the synthetic chemist deliberately 

 experiments with combinations of carbon-compounds. 

 In any case, as regards variations in general, such 

 fortuitousness as there may be is restricted within 

 certain limits. 



So when we pass to the sifting or selection of the 

 variations that crop up, the fortuitousness appears 

 to be less than was formerly believed. For it must be 

 recognized that animals do in varying degrees play 

 the hand of cards with which they have been heredi- 

 tarily endowed. They trade with their talents; they 

 seek out circumstances in which their idiosyncrasies 

 — for that is what variations are — can be turned to 

 good account. Often indeed the environment selects 

 the organisms, but it is also true that organisms some- 

 times select their environment. In short, living crea- 

 tures are not passive pawns; they play their own 

 game, they take a share in their own evolution. When- 

 ever this is true, fortuitousness has markedly shrunk, 

 though it never disappears. We cannot give a scien- 

 tific account of some of the "chances" that have meant 

 much in our own life. 



Perhaps what has been said may be put in the more 

 generalized form of the statement that the vital tends 

 to transcend the mechanical. Some variations may be 

 due to the shuffling of "genes" or hereditary factors 

 in the manoeuvres of the chromosomes. The new pat- 

 tern is somewhat like what we see in a kaleidoscope. 

 It is suggestive of the mechanical. But in other cases 



