Darwin's dilemma 233 



be warranted by experience, and in some measure they are. 

 (Whether they are or not warranted is none of our concern at 

 this moment or in this particular paper.) The point is that 

 I see no problem in unconscious selection going on in domes- 

 tication and in nature untouched by man. Right now I am 

 particularly interested in the analogy and the more so because 

 Darwin himself dwells upon it. Between conscious selection, 

 and that natural selection which accompanies it but lies outside 

 man's intention, Darwin sees a proportion. He makes a tight 

 case of it. Listen to this from Chapter Three of The Origin 

 of Species. 



I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, 

 is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to mark its 

 relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often used 

 by Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the fittest is more accurate, 

 and is sometimes equally convenient. We have seen that man by 

 selection can certainly produce great results, and can adapt organic 

 beings to his own uses, through the accumulation of slight but 

 useful variations, given to him by the hand of Nature. But Natural 

 Selection, as we shall hereafter see, is a power incessantly ready for 

 action, and is as immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts, as 

 the works of Nature are to those of Art. 



H Darwin's analogy holds good, it implies that both art and 

 nature proceed by determinate ways or means to produce some 

 final product. Another point worthy of attention is that to 

 Darwin's mind the works of nature are immeasurably superior 

 to those of our art or craft. We must not interpret Darwin as 

 belie\"ing that art cannot produce certain works that nature 

 could not bring about, in which respect art is superior to nature. 

 Nature does not amputate a gangrenous foot, supply spectacles, 

 or false teeth. Here we can do something that is useful and 

 that nature cannot do. Darwin only meant that nature's ways, 

 in producing her own works, are immeasurably more subtle, 

 and relatively obscure to us, than our own ways and means in 

 producing artifacts. Nature's selection is superior to our o\vn. 

 That is Darwin's position, and notice that he still calls it 

 selection. 



