NATURE'S INSURGENT SON 9 



The fallacy that in given but unknown circum- 

 stances anything whatever may occur in spite of the 

 fact that some one thing has been irrevocably arranged 

 to occur, is a common one. 1 It is correct to assume 

 in the absence of any pertinent knowledge (if we are 

 compelled to estimate the probabilities) that one event 

 is as likely as another to occur ; but nevertheless 

 there is no ' chance ' in the matter since the event has 

 been already determined, and might be predicted by 

 those possessing the knowledge which we lack. Thus 

 then it appears that the conclusion that Man is a 

 part of Nature is by no means equivalent to asserting 

 that he has originated by ' blind chance ' ; it is in 

 fact a specific assertion that he is the predestined out- 

 come of an orderly and to a large extent ' perceptible ' 

 mechanism. 2 



1 There is a tendency among writers on Variation, as affording the 

 opportunity for the operation of Natural Selection, to assume that the 

 variations presented by organisms are minute variations in every 

 direction around a central point. Those observers who have done 

 useful work in showing the definite and limited character of organic 

 variations have very generally assumed that they are opposing a com- 

 monly held opinion that variation is of this equally distributed character. 

 I cannot find that Mr. Darwin made any such assumption ; and it is 

 certain, and must on reflection have been recognized by all naturalists, 

 that the variations by the selection and intensification of which natural 

 selection has produced distinct forms or species, and in the course of 

 time altogether new groups of plants and animals, are strictly limited to 

 definite lines rendered possible, and alone possible, by the constitution 

 of the living matter of the parental organism. We have no reason to 

 suppose that the offspring of a beetle could in the course of any number 

 of generations present variations on which selection could operate so as 

 to eventually produce a mammalian vertebrate ; or that, in fact, the 

 general result of the process of selection of favourable variations in the 

 past has not been ab initio limited by the definite and restricted possi- 

 bilities characteristic of the living substance of the parental organisms 

 of each divergent line or branch of the pedigree. 



