CREATION BY LAW 159 



determined at the right time and place by the will of the 

 Creator. Every race produced by the florist or the breeder, 

 the dog or the pigeon fancier, the ratcatcher, the sporting man, 

 or the slave-hunter, must have been provided for by varieties 

 occurring when wanted ; and as these variations were never 

 withheld, it would prove that the sanction of an all -wise 

 and all-powerful Being has been given to that which the 

 highest human minds consider to be trivial, mean, or debasing. 

 This appears to be a complete answer to the theory that 

 variation sufficient in amount to be accumulated in a given 

 direction must be the direct act of the creative mind, but it is 

 also sufficiently condemned by being so entirely unnecessary. 

 The facility with which man obtains new races depends chiefly 

 upon the number of individuals he can procure to select from. 

 When hundreds of florists or breeders are all aiming at the 

 same object, the work of change goes on rapidly. But a 

 common species in nature contains a thousand or a million- 

 fold more individuals than any domestic race ; and survival 

 of the fittest must unerringly preserve all that vary in the 

 right direction, not only in obvious characters but in minute 

 details not only in external but in internal organs ; so that if 

 the materials are sufficient for the needs of man, there can be 

 no want of them to fulfil the grand purpose of keeping up a 

 supply of modified organisms, exactly adapted to the changed 

 conditions that are always occurring in the inorganic world. 



Tfte Objection that there are Limits to Variation 

 Having now, I believe, fairly answered the chief objections 

 of the Duke of Argyll, I proceed to notice one or two of those 

 adduced in an able and argumentative essay on the " Origin 

 of Species" in the North British Review for July 1867. The 

 writer first attempts to prove that there are strict limits to 

 variation. When we begin to select variations in any one 

 direction, the process is comparatively rapid, but after a con- 

 siderable amount of change has been effected it becomes 

 slower and slower, till at length its limits are reached and no 

 care in breeding and selection can produce any further advance. 

 The racehorse is chosen as an example. It is admitted that, 

 with any ordinary lot of horses to begin with, careful selection 

 would in a few years make a great improvement, and in a 



