338 DAKW1NIANISM. 



relieved of particularity, and >in mere generality to be 

 held sufficient, why not, with equal justice, natural 

 selection also ? But then, is the " equal justice " so very 

 certain ? A philosophy of nature say at once 

 Aristotle's may have great general principles, which 

 really suffice for an ideal articulation of the various 

 limbs, lobes, and lobules of nature into a graduated unity 

 of reason ; but can it be said of ordinary variation as we 

 daily see it, followed by an application of it that is only 

 in supposition can it be said that these are general 

 principles? Or even can it be said that, though 

 particular themselves, still, they do not challenge the parti- 

 cular ? Such philosophy as is in question, safe in the 

 Idea for all that holds of the general, can still appeal to 

 this very Idea for this particular itself in its enormous 

 latitude of external contingency ; and it is to such 

 material and element that philosophy would refer such 

 monstrous caricatures as the Penguin flower that is the 

 astonishment of all Botanical hothouses at present. 

 But is it free to natural selection in such cases to refer 

 even so ? Not but that it may have been the despair of 

 the apparent mere haphazard phantasy in this con- 

 tingency that expressed from Mr. Darwin himself the 

 cry, All is but variable accident, followed by an applica- 

 tion of it that is equally variable, equally haphazard; 

 and there are no principles but these : chance variation 

 and the chance application of it ! 



But are they, again, principles that variation, and 

 that application ? Is either, in effect, more than a mere 

 naming, more than a phrase, more than a word ? No 

 doubt the successors of any one whale or of any one 

 midge, of any one man or of any one gooseberry bush, 

 all vary in points from their predecessors. But do not 

 all these points revert ? or do they not at least always 

 so bear themselves that the universal remains ? Do 



