DESIGN. 243 



vacillation ; but Charles Darwin really as little vacil- 

 lates internally, that is here as anywhere else in what 

 concerns his theory. On the contrary, he is true to his 

 conviction always ; and ever, from stage to stage, it only 

 grows. He says once, for example, as we saw (ii 373), 

 " I have been led to think more on this subject (design), 

 and grieve to say that I come to differ more from you." 

 With all his courtesy and gentleness, Darwin was singu- 

 larly simple, singularly honest, and singularly brave. 

 He could not be happy if he thought any one made a 

 mistake of his opinions, and all the less if these opinions 

 were attributed to his supposed credit. He must speak ; 

 silence was impossible to him. " I had no intention to 

 write atheistically," he says once to Asa Gray ; " but I 

 own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I 

 should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on 

 all sides of us." " It is not that designed variation," he 

 continues, " makes, as it seems to me, my deity ' Natural 

 Selection ' superfluous, but from seeing what an enorm- 

 ous field of undesigned variability " and that undesigned 

 variability means to Mr. Darwin only accident and chance 

 " there is ready for natural selection to appropriate." 

 That is not the Deity of Charles Kingsley who created 

 primal forms with laws of innate self-development. Mr. 

 Darwin will have no such innate and internal law ; he 

 will only have an adventitious and external law. On his 

 system (ii. 176), "only diversified variability" is re- 

 quired, but not any " aboriginal " " power " or " principle." 

 In the Origin, too, there is this strong statement : " The 

 mere lapse of time by itself does nothing, either for or 

 against natural selection: I state this because it has 

 been erroneously asserted that the element of time has 

 been assumed by me to play an all-important part in 

 modifying species, as if all the forms of life were neces- 

 sarily undergoing change through some innate law" Innate 



