274 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [xm. 



should be regarded as a travesty ; but with the original before 

 the reader, we may try to analyse the passage. &quot;For an 

 organized being, Nature is only organization, neither more 

 nor less.&quot; 



Organized beings then have absolutely no relation to inorganic 

 nature : a plant does not depend on soil or sunshine, climate, 

 depth in the ocean, height above it; the quantity of saline 

 matters in water have no influence upon animal life ; the sub 

 stitution of carbonic acid for oxygen in our atmosphere would 

 hurt nobody ! That these are absurdities no one should know 

 better than M. Flourens ; but they are logical deductions from 

 the assertion just quoted, and from the further statement that 

 natural selection means only that &quot; organization chooses and 

 selects organization.&quot; 



For if it be once admitted (what no sane man -denies) that the 

 chances of life of any given organism are increased by certain 

 conditions (A) and diminished by their opposites (B), then it is 

 mathematically certain that any change of conditions in the 

 direction of (A) will exercise a selective influence in favour of 

 that organism, tending to its increase and multiplication, while 

 any change in the direction of (B) will exercise a selective 

 influence against that organism, tending to its decrease and 

 extinction. 



Or, on the other hand, conditions remaining the same, let a 

 given organism vary (and no one doubts that they do vary) in 

 two directions : into one form (a) better fitted to cope with these 

 conditions than the original stock, and a second (6) less well 

 adapted to them. Then it&quot; is no less certain that the conditions 

 in question must exercise a selective influence in favour of (a) 

 and against (6), so that (a) will tend to predominance, and (&) to 

 extirpation. 



That M. Flourens should be unable to perceive the logical 

 necessity of these simple arguments, which lie at the foundation 

 of all Mr. Darwin s reasoning ; that he should confound an irre 

 fragable deduction from the observed relations of organisms to 

 the conditions which lie around them, with a metaphysical 



