264 LIFE AND HABIT. 



differentiation, we will say, as an elephant ; so that to 

 say that an elephant has become an elephant through 

 the accumulation of a vast number of small, fortuitous, 

 but unexplained, variations in some lower creatures, is 

 really to say that it has become an elephant owing to 

 a series of causes about which we know nothing what- 

 ever, or, in other words, that one does not know how it 

 came to be an elephant. But to say that an elephant 

 has become an elephant owing to a series of variations, 

 nine-tenths of which were caused by the wishes of the 

 creature or creatures from which the elephant is de- 

 scended — this is to offer a reason, and definitely put 

 the insoluble one step further back. The question will 

 then turn upon the sufficiency of the reason — that is to 

 say, whether the hypothesis is borne out by facts. 



The effects of competition would, of course, have an 

 extremely important effect upon any creature, in the 

 same way as any other condition of nature under which it 

 lived, must affect its sense of need and its opinions gene- 

 rally. The results of competition would be, as it were, 

 the decisions of an arbiter settling the question whether 

 such and such variation was really to the animal's ad- 

 vantage or not — a matter on which the animal will, on 

 the whole, have formed a pretty fair judgement for 

 itself. Undouhtedly the past decisions of such an arbiter 

 would affect the conduct of the creature, which would 

 have doubtless had its shortcomings and blunders, and 

 would amend them. The creature would shape its 

 course according to its experience of the common 

 course of events, but it would be continually trying, 

 and often successfully, to evade the law by all manner 





