The Descent of Man 5 



creature presenting them, by enabling it to obtain food, 

 escape enemies, and propagate its kind. But once more he 

 says : — 



* We have seen that species at any one period are not indefinitely 

 variable, and are not linked together by a multitude of intermediate 

 gradations, partly because the process of natural selection will always 

 be very slow, and will act, at any one time, only on a very few forms ; 

 and partly because the very process of natural selection almost implies 

 the continual supplanting and extinction of preceding and inter- 

 mediate gradations.' — P. 223. 



Such are Mr. Darwin's earlier statements. At present we 

 read as follows : — 



* I now admit, after reading the essay by Nageli on plants, and the 

 remarks by various authors with respect to animals, more especially 

 those recently made by Professor Broca, that in the earlier editions of 

 my Origin of Species I probably attributed too much to the action of 



natural selection or the survival of the fittest I had not 



formerly sufficiently considered the existence of many structures 

 which appear to be, as far as we can judge, neither beneficial nor 

 injurious ; and this I believe to be one of the greatest oversights as 

 yet detected in my work.' — Descent of Man, vol. i. p. 152. 



A still more remarkable admission is that in which he 

 says, after referring to the action of both natural and sexual 

 selection : — 



' An unexplained residuum of change, perhaps a large one, must 

 be left to the assumed action of those iinhnoivn agencies, which 

 occasionally induce strongly marked and abrupt deviations of 

 structure in our domestic productions.' — Vol. i. p. 154. 



But perhaps the most glaring contradiction is presented by 

 the following passage : — 



' No doubt man, as well as every other animal, presents structures 

 which, as far as we can judge with our little knowledge, are not now 

 of any service to him, nor have been so during any former period of 

 his existence, either in relation to his general conditions of life, or of 

 one sex to the other. Such structures cannot be accounted for by any 



