340 LESSONS FEOM NATURE. [CHAP. XI. 



gularly inflexible organization, Mr. Darwin s obvious mean 

 ing is that the goose has been much less changed by domes 

 tication than other domestic birds. Certainly it Mr. Darwin 

 had meant this, he would not have used the word inflexible, 

 but unmodified, inflexed, or some equivalent expression. 

 To have a singularly inflexible organization is to have one 

 which cannot without great difficulty be modified, not one 

 which, as a fact, has not been modified. 



&quot; Similarly where Mr. Darwin speaks of a whole organism 

 having become plastic and tending to depart from the pa 

 rental type, Mr. Wright asserts that Mr. Darwin means 

 capable of being moulded, or fashioned to the purpose, as 

 clay. This is to credit Mr. Darwin with the enunciation of 

 a truism which I am sure he would never have written. The 

 words tends to depart * are plainly a repetition and expla 

 nation of the epithet plastic, and fix its meaning. Mr. 

 Darwin here evidently predicates an existing predisposition, 

 and not a mere state of indifference. By tends to depart 

 he cannot mean capable of being made to depart, for that 

 would not indicate any influence which has effected the 

 whole organization, as by his hypothesis every organism is 

 capable of being modified. 



&quot;I will now turn to the second matter of argument, that 

 Mr. Wright s m which Mr. Chauncey Wright treats of the alleged 

 second point. poss jbi y i rre ligious tendencies of Mr. Darwin s 

 theory, and of my incompetency in physics and ignorance 

 of the experimental philosophy. 



&quot; He says : 



&quot; Mr.^Mivart has made the mistake, which nullifies nearly the whole 

 of his criticism, of supposing that &quot; the theory of Natural Selection may 

 (though it need not) be taken in such a way as to lead men to regard 

 the present organic world as formed, so to speak, accidentally, beautiful 

 and wonderful as is confessedly the haphazard result &quot; (p. 33). Mr. 

 Mivart, like many another writer, seems to forget the age of the world 



* &quot;The omission of the words in a slight decree in my book was purely 

 accidental. As, however, the question is one of principle, I do not see that 

 the omission was of any importance. 



