REMARKS ON NATURAL SELECTION. 357 



fittest," is in no sense a theory, but simply an observed 

 fact, yet even if the words are allowed to stand for 

 " descent with modification by means of natural selec- 

 tion," it is still misleading to write as though this were 

 synonymous with "the theory of evolution," or " the 

 theory of descent with modification." To do this 

 prevents the reader from bearing in mind that " evolu- 

 tion by means of the circumstance-suiting power 

 of plants and animals" as advanced by the earlier 

 evolutionists ; and " evolution by means of lucky 

 accidents" with comparatively little circumstance- 

 suiting power, are two very different things, of which 

 the one may be true and the other untrue. It leads the 

 reader to forget that evolution by no means stands or 

 falls with evolution by means of natural selection, and 

 makes him think that if he accepts evolution at all, he 

 4s bound to Mr. Darwin's view of it. Hence, when he 

 falls in with such writers as Professor Mivart and the 

 Kev. J. J. Murphy, who show, and very plainly, that the 

 survival of the fittest, unsupplemented by something 

 which shall give a definite aim to the variations which 

 successively occur, fails to account for the coadaptations 

 of need and structure, he imagines that evolution has 

 much less to say for itself than it really has. If Mr. 

 Darwin, instead of taking the line which he has 

 thought fit to adopt towards Buffon, Dr. Erasmus 

 Darwin, Lamarck, and the author of the 'Vestiges,' 

 had shown us what these men taught, why they taught 

 it, wherein they were wrong, and how he proposed to 

 set them right, he would have taken a course at once 

 more agreeable with ordinary practice, and more likely 



