34-O Darwin, and after Darwin. 



Darwinians are both logically and historically justified 

 in employing the word " accidental " as the word 

 which serves most properly to convey the meaning 

 that they intend namely, variations due to causes 

 accidental to the struggle for existence. Similarly, 

 when it is said that variations are " spontaneous," 

 or even "fortuitous," nothing further is meant than 

 that we do not know the causes which lead to them, and 

 that, so far as the principle of selection is concerned, 

 it is immaterial what these causes may be. Or, to 

 revert to our former illustration, the various weights 

 of different kinds of earths are no doubt all due to 

 definite causes ; but, in relation to the selective 

 action of the gold-washer, all the different weights 

 of whatever kinds of earth he may happen to in- 

 clude in his washing-apparatus are, strictly speaking, 

 accidental. And as at different washings he meets 

 with different proportions of heavy earths with light 

 ones, and as these "variations "are immaterial to him, 

 he may colloquially speak of them as " fortuitous," or 

 due to " chance," even though he knows that at each 

 washing they must have been determined by definite 

 causes. 



More adequately to deal with this merely formal 

 objection, however, would involve more logic-chop- 

 ping than is desirable on the present occasion. But 

 I have already dealt with it fully elsewhere, viz. in 

 The Contemporary Review for June, 1888, to which 

 therefore I may refer any one who is interested in 

 dialectics of this kind l . 



1 Within the last few months this objection has been presented anew 

 by Mr. D. Syme, whose book On the Modification of Organisms exhibils 

 a curious combination of shrewd criticisms with almost ludicrous mis- 



