210 THE LAW. 



mutation under the influence of external conditions" " de- 

 velopment through the force of maternal volition on the 

 embryotic organism" or, "natural selection in the struggle 

 for existence," neither of them (even were they true to the 

 extent their advocates argue) ascends any higher than a 

 mere subordinate factor in the law of vital development. 

 We are far from denying the influence of such causes on the 

 diversity of life. On the contrary, unprejudiced inquiry is 

 constrained to rank them among the activities of the Crea- 

 tor's plan, but simply as secondary activities, limited alike 

 in their power and in the range of their applicability. 

 Thus, however, it ever is : we discover a cause where several 

 others are equally operative and potent, and our ignorance 

 or enthusiasm is but too prone to ascribe to the one what 

 is ascribable alike to the others that remain undetected and 

 undetermined. 



Even Mr Darwin, wedded as he is to the theory of Na- 

 tural Selection, is constrained to admit the operation of 

 several activities in the law of vital diversity. " It is in- 

 teresting," he says, in one of the most genial passages in his 

 work, "to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with 

 many plants of many kinds, Avith birds singing on the 

 bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms 

 crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that those 

 elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, 

 and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have 

 all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, 

 taken in the largest sense, being growth by reproduction ; 

 inheritance, which is almost implied by reproduction ; va- 

 riability from the indirect and direct action of the external 

 conditions of life, and from use and disuse ; a ratio of in- 

 crease so high as to lead to a struggle for life, and as a con- 

 sequence to natural selection, entailing divergence of charac- 

 ter and the extinction of less improved forms. Thus, from' 



