xiu.] CRITICISMS ON " THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES." 315 



comma la nature.* A la place do Vart de bdtir M. Darwin, met 

 Vetection naturelle, et e'est tout un : l'un n'est pas plus chimeiique 

 que l*autre." (P. 31.) 



And this is really all that M. Flourens can make of 

 Natural Selection. We have given the original, in fear 

 lest a translation should be regarded as a travesty ; Lut 

 with the original before the reader, we may try to 

 analyse the passage. " For an organized being, Nature 

 is only organization, neither more nor less." 



Organized beings then have absolutely no relation to 

 inorganic nature : a plant does not depend on soil or 

 sunshine, climate, depth in the ocean, height above it ; 

 the quantity of saline matters in water have no influence 

 upon animal life ; the substitution of carbonic acid for 

 oxygen in our atmosphere would hurt nobody ! That 

 these are .absurdities no one should know better than 

 M. Flourens ; but they are logical deductions from the 

 assertion just quoted, and from the further statement 

 that natural selection means only that "organization 

 chooses and selects organization." 



For if it be once admitted (what no sane man denies) 

 that the chances of life of any given . organism are 

 increased by certain conditions (A) and diminished by 

 their opposites (B), then it is mathematically certain that 

 any change of conditions in the direction of (A) will 

 exercise a selective influence in favour of that organism, 

 tending to its increase and multiplication, while any 

 change in the direction of (B) will exercise a selective 

 influence against that organism, tending to its decrease 

 and extinction. 



Or, on the other hand, conditions remaining the same, 

 let a given organism vary (and no one doubts that they 

 do vary) in two directions : into one form (a) better fitted 

 to cope with these conditions than the original stock, 

 and a second (6) less well adapted to them. Then it is 



