12 Darwinism and Other Essays. 



cumulated inheritance of minute individual mod- 

 ifications ; and, secondly, that such modifications 

 have been accumulated mainly, or in great part, 

 through the selection of individuals best fitted to 

 survive and transmit their peculiarities to their 

 offspring. But that this survival of the fittest 

 individuals has been the sole agency concerned in 

 bringing about the present wondrous variety of 

 living beings Mr. Darwin has nowhere asserted 

 or implied, having even in the earliest edition of 

 his great work explicitly pointed out certain other 

 agencies as involved in the complex result. Yet 

 other agencies, hitherto unsuspected, may be dis- 

 covered in the future ; but such discoveries, how- 

 ever far they may go in supplementing the Dar- 

 winian theory, can only strengthen the central 

 position as regards the rise of specific differences 

 through gradual modifications. 



That natural selection is a true cause, and one 

 capable of accumulating variations to an indefi- 

 nite extent, is now held to be beyond question. 

 The wonders wrought by artificial selection in 

 the breeding of domestic animals and cultivated 

 plants are such that one might well have attrib- 

 uted great results to the exercise of a similar se- 

 lection by Nature through countless ages, could 

 any such process be detected. Few, however, 



