CHAP, vii EVOLUTION IN DARWIN 69 



Or, if we hesitate to say this of Darwin, we may at least 

 affirm that he left much ground for subsequent investiga- 

 tion. He concerned himself but little with the laws 

 determining variation. There were variations; there 

 were candidates of varying degrees of merit. Get me 

 candidates, he said in effect ; I will give you an 

 examiner who, however tedious in method, is in the 

 long-run unerringly wise. Nature will select, come the 

 variations how they may. At times, as we have said, 

 Darwin seems willing to accept Lamarck's cruder and 

 less verified doctrine, of a direct self-adjustment of the 

 organism to the environment as a source of variation. 

 Plainly, however, if this does occur, then, so far as it 

 occurs, it supersedes natural selection. The supplement 

 to the theory will displace the theory itself. Those 

 called in to give help as allies will remain as absolute 

 sovereigns. There is no need of indirect methods for 

 compassing a teleological result, if such a result may 

 come about directly through the living powers of 

 the organism. We shall do well then to neglect 

 this admission by Darwin in favour of extreme 

 Lamarckism, particularly as it seems to be a mere 

 obiter dictum^ 



Even use-inheritance, however, will avail to shorten 

 the process of natural selection. The offspring will 

 start at the point which the parents had reached when 

 it was conceived, not at the point where the parents 

 themselves started, nor yet at that point plus a certain 



1 Darwin's clearest references to the causes of variation are probably 

 found in his Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication. The 

 theme is therefore a restricted one, and it must be added that the language 

 employed is less clear than would be wished. The following references 

 may be consulted : voL ii. pp. 290, 305, 311, 552. It should be added 

 that to a certain extent any reliance on Lamarckian factors, even for 

 " use-inheritance," tends to throw the tedious process of natural selection 

 into the background. 



