Bihlior/raphical Notice. 137 



But, having said a few words on the narrowness of the limits within 

 which we can honestly concei\ e this ingenious fancy to be applicable, 

 we might call attention to many other considerations arising out of it, 

 did space permit. To our mind indeed the whole theory of "natu- 

 ral selection " is far too utilitarian, and its importance immensely 

 overrated. "An extraordinary amount of moditication," says Mr. 

 Darwin, " implies an unusually large and long-continued amount of 

 variability, which has been continually accumulated, by natural selec- 

 tion,ybr the benefit of the species'' (p. 153) ; but surely every natural- 

 ist must, in his own province, have observed that a vast number of 

 " modifications " have apparently no reference whatsoever to the 

 "good," or advancement, of the species (a fact indeed which has not 

 altogether escaped, teste p. 90, our author's sagacious ken), but are 

 often merely, as it were, fantastic, or grotesque, having no con- 

 nexion with either its well-being or mode of life, and the final cause 

 of which it is utterly hopeless to discuss. Moreover, some of these 

 "developments" (so called) seem merely given for the adornment 

 or elegance of the creature, and frequently display an arrangement 

 of colouring which nothing but an actual intelligence could have 

 planned, and which therefore no amount of mere chance " selection " 

 by an imaginary agent called "nature" can be supposed to have 

 effected. Nor can such characters be referred to what our author 

 would call " sexual selection," seeing that, in the majority of in- 

 stances, they pertain to both males and females. Neither can they 

 be due to " correlation of growth ;" for we cannot conceive that such 

 marvellous perfection of painting as, for instance, the tints of certain 

 l)utterflies (which are blended together with such nicety and consum- 

 mate skill, in accordance with the laws of colouring, as to surpass an 

 artist's touch) could have been brought about through mere corre- 

 lation with a change in some other part of the organism. Such 

 cases bespeak thought, imagination, and judgment, all and each of 

 the highest stamp, and are utterly inexplicable on any of the three 

 j)rinciples above alluded to. 



Besides, to make "nature" accomplish anything requiring intelli- 

 gence and foresight, and other attributes of mind, is nothing more 

 or less than to personify an abstraction, and must be regarded there- 

 fore as in the highest degree un])hilosophical. We believe it was 

 Coleridge who first called attention to this fact, that to treat a mere 

 abstraction as an efficient cause is simply absurd. But that this is 

 the plain and undoubted tendency of our modern materialists, the 

 following sentence, taken at random from the present volume, will 

 certainly go far to corroborate : " As man can produce, and certainly 

 has produced, a great result by his methodical and unconscious means 

 of selection, what may not nature effect ? Man can act only on ex- 

 ternal and visible characters : nature cares nothing for appearances, 

 except in so far as they may be useful to any being. Hhe can act on 

 every internal organ, on every shade of constitutional difference, on 

 the whole machinery of life. Man selects only for his own good ; 

 Xature onlv for that of the being which she tends. Every selected 



Ann. i^ Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 3. Vol. v. 10 ' 



