NATURAL SELECTION CREATIVE xxiii 



Mutation is the importunate hypothesis, at length 

 admitted on account of its importunity. 



Darwin's view, that Selection is the paramount power 

 in the production of species, is made very clear by his 

 metaphor of an architect constructing a beautiful building 

 out of the fragments of broken stone at the foot of a 

 precipice.^ For the purposes of the controversy of the 

 hour, a more appropriate metaphor is that of the artist. 

 Pictorial effects could no doubt be obtained from time 

 to time by the simple method of throwing colours at a 

 screen : occasionally, perhaps, such ' Mutations ' would 

 be superior to anything which an artist could achieve by 

 adding here a little and there a little to the developing 

 picture. It would hardly be reasonable to infer from a 

 few such successes that the proper function of the artist 

 is merely to wait for the appropriate Mutation, and to 

 cease producing effects by the accumulation of minute 

 increments — in fact ' to select not to create '. The 

 essential difficulty about the chance method is that it 

 could never yield representations of particular objects. 

 Now there is an important section of the organic world 

 where the metaphor passes into reality. I refer to the 

 countless thousands of cases in which there has been 

 evolved on the surface of an animal a picture of some 

 portion of its environment — the unending instances of 

 Protective Resemblance and the still more striking 

 examples of Mimicry. 



It is as unlikely that a key could be made to fit a com- 

 plicated lock by a number of chance blows upon a blank 

 piece of metal, as that the elaborate pattern on the wings 

 of a butterfly should have been reproduced on those 

 of its mimic by Mutation. 



It is necessary to state very prominently that the 



^ Variatmi under Domestication, London, 1875, vol. ii, pp. 426-7. 



