NATURAL SELECTION CRITICISED. 273 



damnable), as showing Iww profoundly ignorant we are on 

 the causes of variation." As such causes he certainly 

 does name conditions, and yet (iii. 25) he says, "We 

 reaMy know nothing of what are the important condi- 

 tions." To his son (iii. 346) he seems only to have had 

 an " ever-present wish to learn something of the causes 

 of variation." It is quite certain, too, that he will not 

 have these causes internal to the organism itself as 

 matter of innate plan or as more than is implied in mere 

 ordinary, physical, mechanical hap. He will not allow 

 Lyell (ii. 176) any necessity to presuppose an aboriginal 

 " power of adaptation," or " principle of improvement ; " 

 he will have only his own " diversified variability." And 

 we have just seen that he was as exclusive with Hooker: 

 variability is not (p. 157), as he (Hooker) seems to 

 suppose, " some necessary tendency in the variability to 

 go on." Natural selection (iii. 33) "means only the 

 preservation of variations which independently arise ; " 

 it concerns only " slight spontaneous variations." In 

 short, as we have seen, the whole affair is this (ii. 124): 

 " I cannot doubt that during millions of generations 

 individuals of a species will be born " (as the bird with 

 the Tooth of an inch longer beak) " with some slight 

 variation profitable to some part of its economy." Mr. 

 Darwin cannot doubt this, the rather that he gives his 

 inagination millions of generations to ramble in. Why 

 cannot he have said at once : I cannot doubt but that 

 in millions of generations new species will form ? What 

 is the use of gratuitously putting off the climax by the 

 shoving in of an equally imagined variation that adds 

 not one single iota of what explanation is desired ? 



We have seen how Mr. Darwin cannot too much 



accentuate the smallness, slightness, tritiingness of the 



initial variation or difference that shall at least open the 



way to the eventual specific change. But when we 



18 



