LAMARCK AND MR. DARWIN. 267 



does not say that organic beings have no tendency to 

 vary at all, but only that there is no good evidence that 

 they have a tendency to progressive development, which, 

 I take it, means, to see an ideal a long way off, and very 

 different to their present selves, which ideal they think 

 will suit them, and towards which they accordingly make. 

 I would admit this as contrary to all experience. I 

 doubt whether plants and animals have any innate 

 tendency to vary at all, being led to question this by 

 gathering from "Plants and Animals under Domes- 

 tication " that this is Mr. Darwin's own opinion. I am 

 inclined rather to think that they have only an innate 

 power to vary slightly, in accordance with changed con- 

 ditions, and an innate capability of being affected both in 

 structure and instinct, by causes similar to those which 

 we observe to affect ourselves. But however this may 

 be, they do vary somewhat, and unless they did, they 

 would not in time have come to be so widely different 

 from each other as they now are. The question is as to 

 the origin and character of these variations. 



We say they mainly originate in a creature through 

 a sense of its needs, and vary through the varying sur- 

 roundings which will cause those needs to vary, and 

 through the opening up of new desires in many crea- 

 tures, as the consequence of the gratification of old 

 ones ; they depend greatly on differences of individual 

 capacity and temperament; they are communicated, 

 and in the course of time transmitted, as what we call 

 hereditary habits or structures, though these are only, in 

 truth, intense and epitomised memories of how certain 

 creatures liked to deal with protoplasm. The question 



