286 DARWINIANISM. 



application of it is there the slightest glimpse of a law ? 

 A law is not something that riiay or may not happen, as 

 a variation is, and as much more the merely supposititious 

 application of it is. A law, as Aristotle would say, is 

 either always or for the most part (^ yap ael 77 o>9 eirl TO 

 TroXu). But a variation, as again and again characterised 

 by Mr. Darwin, is accidental, is a thing of chance. A 

 variation, therefore, is neither always nor for the most part, 

 but something very much the reverse a mere unfounded 

 miscellaneous vicissitude ; and so, consequently, the 

 application that depends upon the variation the selec- 

 tion that is supposed to see and seize it must be still 

 more doubtful, at the same time that it is in itself some- 

 thing absolutely adventurous, the merest fancy of a 

 possibility assumed. 



A mere suggestion, then, it may be, of how this 

 variation may go to this side, and that variation to that, 

 with all manner of wonderful imaginary results ; but it 

 is neither a discovery nor a law. Mr. Darwin did, two 

 or three times, mention law just for the variations as the 

 variations. And a moment's thought will suffice for the 

 perception of how hard it would be to fancy a law for 

 the selection as the selection. The selection is the 

 turning of a variation to a new use ; but what that new 

 use shall be is evidently wholly dependent on the nature 

 of the variation itself. Law, then, if there is to be any 

 law at all in the one single process that is postulated, 

 must be limited to the variations, and even there, as said, 

 it is no more than a time or two, merely murmured of. It is 

 never seriously taken to, and is never seriously discussed. 

 To give law, in fact, to the variation, would, for Mr. 

 Darwin, be simply felo de se. Chance, and chance alone 

 after all, can prove a lever for the operations that follow 

 as Mr. Darwin figures them. To his way of looking, it is 

 wholly undetermined either when or how the change 



