REVIEWS OF 'EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW.' 387 



We find the writer who in the 'Academy ' declares 

 that he has been left without " a single clear idea " as 

 to what ' Evolution, Old and New,' has been driving at 

 saying on the same day in the ' Examiner' that ' Evolu- 

 tion, Old and New/ " has a more evident purpose than 

 any of its predecessors." If so, I am afraid the prede- 

 cessors must have puzzled Mr. Allen very unpleasantly. 

 What the purpose of ' Evolution, Old and New,' is, he 

 proceeds to explain : 



" As to his (Mr. Butler's) main argument, it conies 

 briefly to this: natural selection does not originate 

 favourable varieties, it only passively permits them to 

 exist ; therefore it is the unknown cause which produced 

 the variations, not the natural selection which spared 

 them, that ought to count as the mainspring of evolu- 

 tion. That unknown cause Mr. Butler boldly declares 

 to be the will of the organism itself. An intelligent 

 ascidian wanted a pair of eyes,* so set to work and 

 made itself a pair, exactly as a man makes a micro- 

 scope ; a talented fish conceived the idea of walking 

 on dry land, so it developed legs, turned its swim 

 bladder into a pair of lungs, and became an amphibian ; 

 an aesthetic guinea-fowl admired bright colours, so it 

 bought a paint-box, studied Mr. Whistler's ornamental 

 designs, and, painting itself a gilded and ocellated tail, 

 was thenceforth a peacock. But how about plants? 

 Mr. Butler does not shirk even this difficulty. The 

 theory must be maintained at all hazards. . . . 



* See p. 44, and the whole of chap, v., where I say of this sup- 

 position, that " nothing could be conceived more foreign to experience 

 and common sense." 



