68 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART n 



If the giraffe stretched its muscles and its vertebrae to 

 their utmost, and begat a son whose neck, unstretched, 

 was as tall as the parent's in his habitual tiptoe attitude, 

 that would be use-inheritance one-half of Lamarck's 

 doctrine, and an accredited though a subordinate portion 

 of Darwin's. If, however, the hungry giraffe organised 

 in itself by some means or other an extra joint, or an 

 extra set of muscles, or, as would probably be necessary, 

 both, that would be a grotesque illustration of the second 

 half of Lamarck's theory, of direct action by environ- 

 ment in the way of modifying an organism ; a grotesque 

 illustration of a sufficiently grotesque belief. At times, 

 it is said, Darwin writes as if he were willing to admit 

 this, viz. as a source of variations. But he has never 

 formulated a theory of the cause of variations. He is 

 content, as we observed, to treat them as casual. That, 

 however, cannot mean that they are uncaused, or that the 

 uniformity of nature breaks down as we approach micro- 

 scopic cell processes. Perhaps at the utmost we can 

 justify the phrase by taking it to mean that congenital 

 variations from the parental qualities are neither on the 

 average advantageous to the species, which might be 

 repudiated as a somewhat strong teleological doctrine, 

 nor yet disadvantageous to the species, a view which 

 would imply a sort of dysteleology, as if we lived in the 

 devil's world, and evolution had to go on with a dead 

 heave in spite of the recalcitrance of nature. Chance or 

 accident in common language means "not purposed," 

 and it may perhaps be fair to call variations " casual," if 

 they stand on the average neutral to the purpose or end 

 of the species, viz. to survive and propagate itself. Still 

 the epithet used without analysis is rather slovenly, and 

 any thinking which is fairly summarised by the use of 

 that epithet must be regarded as rather slovenly too. 



