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be so, when we consider what is palpably Nature's 

 object in bestowing individual variations. That object 

 is to avoid monotony, or a principle of stagnation in 

 her productions, by maintaining endless diversity in 

 an all-embracing bond of unity, or, in other words, 

 to impress upon each member of a species its own 

 individual stamp and character within the compass 

 of a determinate and fixed specific type. 



We shall find that Nature, in the exercise of her 

 creative power, does not permit the individual variant 

 to wander forth outside of its determinate specific 

 form, so as to build apart, and by its own energy, a 

 new variety or a new species. This would be an 

 absolutely anarchic principle, utterly subversive of 

 Nature's scheme of preserving her leading types, and 

 tending to the production of an irregular and fantastic 

 multitude of new forms. Nature, as we shall here- 

 after see, has her own method of modifying and 

 altering her specific types, without permitting their 

 individual members, as such, to take any part in her 

 work of modification. It is an altogether illogical 

 inference of Darwin's, that because man can and does 

 use individual differences to build up new varieties of 

 his domesticated species, therefore Nature can and does 

 use them to originate wild species in their native 

 haunts. No doubt all-powerful Nature could use 

 individual variations to accomplish the same end in 

 regard to her wild species which man achieves in 

 regard to his domesticated breeds, if it served her 

 creative purpose to do so. But in order to do so, she 



