258 DARWINIASISM 



improvement (ii. 176); that^ it should be "diversely 

 variable " from without is for him enough. 



But it is no" question of allowance : the " appeared " 

 First is by very supposition (were it no more than the 

 imagined proteine) granted to be at least so far an 

 organism that it is " ready to undergo still more complex 

 changes " as, for example, into you and me at last, and 

 whatever else that lives ! 



Now, then, again, for the fostering of this organism, 

 why should we feel driven laboriously to invent a 

 specialty ? Are we not already supplied with means 

 enough ? What are conditions ? We need not refer to 

 Kant and his provisions of more feathers for birds, and 

 thicker integument for wheat, in the cold (Lectures, p. 391). 

 What are, or at least were, conditions to Mr. Darwin 

 himself ? For plants we have this in the Journal 

 (p. 338): "It is curious to observe how the seeds of the 

 grass and other plants seem to accommodate themselves, 

 as if by an acquired habit, to the quantity of rain which 

 falls on different parts of this coast. One shower far 

 northward at Copiapo produces as great an effect on the 

 vegetation as two at Guasco, and as three or four in this 

 district (Conchalee). At Valparaiso a winter so dry as 

 greatly to injure the pasture, would at Guasco produce 

 the most unusual abundance " (from Valparaiso to 

 Copiapo, 420 miles). For animals the same authority 

 (p. 492) has this: " I can hardly doubt that these rats 

 have been imported, and, as at the Galapagos, have 

 varied from the effect of the new conditions to which 

 they have been exposed." 



Later, of course, Mr. Darwin, with at least contra- 

 dictory expression, hates conditions ; and the reason is 

 his theory. " Whilst the influence of a struggle between 

 creature and creature is so hidden," he says (ii. 212), " I 

 am inclined to swear at the North Pole," etc. He con- 



