DETERMINATION OF WHAT THE DARWINIAN THEORY 75. 229 



places in the economy of nature." It is of this principle 

 of divergence that Mr. Francis Darwin (ii. 15) feels him- 

 self called upon to make some explanation. " In reading 

 the sketch of 1844," he says he had found it " difficult to 

 recognise as a flaw " what was so designated by his father : 

 " descent with modification implies divergence, and we 

 become so habituated to a belief in descent, and therefore 

 in divergence, that we do not notice the absence of proof 

 that divergence is in itself an advantage ; as shown in the 

 Autobiography, my father in 1876 found it hardly credible 

 that he should have overlooked the problem and its 

 solution." The point concerned is understood in a 

 moment by reference to the stock of horses which splits 

 up into plough horses, race-horses, etc. Individuals of 

 the same stock, that is, precisely as they vary, are vari- 

 ously applied, or they come to occupy " diversified places 

 in the polity of nature." This is further illustrated by the 

 superior yield of the same plot of ground if sown, not 

 with " a single variety of wheat," but with " a mixture of 

 varieties." " The same spot will support more life if 

 occupied by very diverse forms," says Mr. Darwin himself 

 (ii. 124). Now, in such illustrations, the " superior yield," 

 the " more life," the " increase in numbers," the " greater 

 produce," the " more individuals," etc., are almost so 

 exclusively thrust into view that the gist of the illustra- 

 tion is lost ; which gist solely concerns the difference, of 

 the places seized by the differences of the individuals seizing 

 them. In that, and in that alone, lies the principle of the 

 divergence of character. Mr. Darwin's favourableness of 

 variation, and Mr. Darwin's principle of divergence, mean 

 no more, each, than the single expression new relation to 

 nature. The favourableness of the variation depends on a 

 new relation to nature, and it is just in such new relation 

 that the divergence of character lies. Why, even with the 

 plot and the grain, how is it that the mixed seeds have a 



