OF NATURAL SELECTION. IJ I 



Selection had ever argued or supposed that it could. 

 The calculation takes it for granted that the theory is 

 erroneous, instead of proving 1 it to be in error. Upon 

 this assumption, it might have been put far more 

 strongly, only that a stronger way of putting it would 

 have borne on the face of it the suspicion of some in- 

 herent fallacy. It begins by supposing that there are 

 c twenty different ways in which a Leptalls may vary, 

 only one of these being in the direction ultimately re- 

 quired;' it might quite as truthfully, or even more so, 

 have said a thousand instead of twenty, and then the 

 second step would have given the chance as only one in 

 a million, instead of one in four hundred. But while 

 the theory of Natural Selection speaks of numerous 

 minute useful variations, Mr. Bennett will not allow 

 that combination of terms. Let them be numerous and 

 minute, if you will, he says ; but if small, they cannot 

 be useful ; if useful, they cannot be small. He claims 

 to have Mr. Darwin's own word for it, that a large va- 

 riation would not be permanent, as though Mr. Darwin 

 had said, 'living creatures have come to be what they 

 are by successive useful deviations of structure perma- 

 nently propagated, but no large deviations are perma- 

 nent, and no small ones are useful/ It is quite obvious 

 that in the use of relative terms, such as great and small, 

 Mr. Darwin neither intended to stultify himself nor has 

 done so. A thing may be large enough to be useful 

 without being large as compared with something twenty 

 times its own size ; and a man may be said to have a 

 huge brain in a very small body, although the body in 



