346 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



grouse, and in keeping that colour when once acquired." 

 Such language, says the late Mr. G. H. Lewes, " is 

 misleading ; " it makes " selection an agent."* 



It is plain that natural selection cannot be con- 

 sidered a cause of variation ; and if not of variation, 

 which is as the rain drop, then not of specific and 

 generic modification, which are as the river ; for the 

 variations must make their appearance before they can 

 be selected. Suppose that it is an advantage to a horse 

 to have an especially hard and broad hoof, then a horse 

 born with such a hoof will indeed probably survive in 

 the struggle for existence, but he was not born with the 

 larger and harder hoof because of his subsequently sur- 

 viving. He survived because he was born fit not, he 

 was born fit because he survived. The variation must 

 arise first and be preserved afterwards. 



Mr. Darwin therefore is in the following dilemma. 

 If he does not treat natural selection as a cause of 

 variation, the 'Origin of Species' will turn out to 

 have no raison d'etre. It will have professed to have 

 explained to us the manner in which species has 

 originated, but it will have left us in the dark con- 

 cerning the origin of those variations which, when 

 added together, amount to specific and generic differ- 

 ences. Thus, as I said in ' Life and Habit,' Mr. Darwin 

 will have made us think we know the whole road, in 

 spite of his having almost ostentatiously blindfolded us 

 at every step in the journey. The ' Origin of Species ' 

 would thus prove to be no less a piece of intellectual 

 sleight-of-hand than Paley's ' Natural Theology.' 

 * 'Physical Basis of Miiid,' p. 108. 



