INSTINCTS OF NEUTER INSECTS. 249 



probably, than strokes of ill luck have counteracted) 

 but to strokes of cunning — to a sense of need, and to 

 study of the past and present which have given shrewd 

 people a key with which to unlock the chambers of 

 the future. 



Further, Mr. Darwin himself says ("Plants and 

 Animals under Domestication," ii. p. 237, ed. 1875) : — 



"But I think we must take a broader view and 

 conclude that organic beings when subjected during 

 several generations to any change whatever in their 

 conditions tend to vary : the kind of variation which 

 ensues depending in most cases in afar higher degree on 

 the nature or constitution of the being, than on the nature 

 of the changed conditions!* And this we observe in man. 

 The history of a man prior to his birth is more im- 

 portant as far as his success or failure goes than his 

 surroundings after birth, important though these may 

 indeed be. The able man rises in spite of a thousand j 

 hindrances, the fool fails in spite of every advantage. I 

 1 Natural selection," however, does not make either the I 

 able man or the fool. It only deals with him after I 

 other causes have made him, and would seem in the I 

 end to amount to little more than to a statement of the 

 fact that when variations have arisen they will accumu-r 

 late. One cannot look, as has already been said, for 

 the origin of species in that part of the course of nature 

 which settles the preservation or extinction of variations j 

 which have already arisen from some unknown cause, I 

 but one must look for it in the causes that have 

 led to variation at all. These causes must get, as it 

 were, behind the back of " natural selection," which is 



