286 LIFE AND HABIT. 



rous tribe. The vague use of an imperfectly-understood 

 doctrine of chance, has led Darwinian supporters, first, 

 to confuse the two cases above distinguished, and 

 secondly, to imagine that a very slight balance in favour 

 of some individual sport must lead to its perpetuation. 

 All that can be said is that in the above example the 

 favoured sport would be preserved once in fifty times. 

 Let us consider what will be its influence on the main 

 stock when preserved. It will breed and have a pro- 

 geny of say 100 ; now this progeny will, on the whole, 

 be intermediate between the average individual and the 

 sport. The odds in favour of one of this generation of 

 the new breed will be, say one and a half to one, as 

 compared with the average individual; the odds in 

 their favour will, therefore, be less than that of their 

 parents ; but owing to their greater number the chances 

 are that about one and a half of them would survive. 

 Unless these breed together a most improbable event 

 their progeny would again approach the average indi- 

 vidual; there would be 150 of them, and their supe- 

 riority would be, say in the ratio of one and a quartei 

 to one ; the probability would now be that nearly two 

 of them would survive, and have 200 children with an 

 eighth superiority. Eather more than two of these 

 would survive ; but the superiority would again 

 dwindle; until after a few generations it would no 

 longer be observed, and would count for no more in the 

 struggle for life than any of the hundred trifling advan- 

 tages which occur in the ordinary organs. 



"'An illustration will bring this conception home. 

 Suppose a white man to have been wrecked on an 



