iv author's preface to second volume. 



The Second Essay is concerned with the problem as to the 

 origin of those higher mental powers of civilized races which 

 have played no part in the struggle for existence, and the high 

 cultivation of which has been entirely independent of natural 

 selection. I have chosen the art of music as an example, 

 because it presents so deceptive an appearance of improvement 

 by the inheritance of the results of practice from one generation 

 to another. 



The Third Essay is an answer to the numerous objections 

 which Prof. Vines of Oxford has advanced against many of my 

 views. The reader of the First Volume will perhaps welcome 

 it, as it elucidates some points upon which I have been fre- 

 quently misunderstood. 



The Fourth and last Essay is not only the longest, but the 

 one to which I attach the chief importance, because my views 

 as to the essential meaning of so-called sexual reproduction, 

 and the allied process of conjugation in unicellular organisms 

 reach their final form in it, having been reconstructed on the 

 basis of various new discoveries. I believe that I have solved, 

 at any rate as regards the main points, the problem of the 

 enigmatical double extrusion of polar bodies from the animal 

 egg, and have explained why only a single division of the 

 nuclear substance does not take place. I hope, furthermore, 

 that I have thus confirmed my views upon the general signifi- 

 cance of so-called sexual reproduction, — as a means for pro- 

 ducing hereditary individual variations, and for arranging these 

 variations in ever fresh combinations. 



My hypotheses have been at times severely handled when 

 shown to be incorrect by the discovery of new facts,— even 

 when these latter were themselves founded on my views. 

 I freely admit that I have made many mistakes ;— my explana- 

 tion of the formation of polar bodies by the egg was at first 

 wrong, then only partially right, and claims to be correct only 

 in the concluding essay. Let who will reproach me : I am not 

 ashamed of this error ; on the contrary, I regard it with a cer- 

 tain satisfaction, for I believe it pointed the path to truth. I 



