CRITICISMS ON " THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES " 191 



" J'ai dej& dit ce qu'il faut penser de I' election naturelle. Ou 

 I' election naturelle n'est rien, ou c'est la nature : mais la nature 

 douee d' election, mais la nature personnifiee : derniere erreur du 

 dernier siecle : Le xix ne fait plus de personnifications." (P. 53.) 



M. Flourens cannot imagine an unconscious selection it is 

 for him a contradiction in terms. Did M. Flourens ever visit 

 one of the prettiest watering-places of " la belle France," 

 the Baie d'Arcachon ? If so, he will probably have passed 

 through the district of the Landes, and will have had an 

 opportunity of observing the formation of " dunes " on a 

 grand scale. What are these " dunes " ? The winds and 

 waves of the Bay of Biscay have not much consciousness, 

 and yet they have with great care " selected," from among 

 an infinity of masses of silex of all shapes and sizes, which 

 have been submitted to then- action, all the grains of sand 

 below a certain size, and have heaped them by themselves 

 over a great area. This sand has been " unconsciously 

 selected " from amidst the gravel in which it first lay with 

 as much precision as if man had " consciously selected " it 

 by the aid of a sieve. Physical Geology is full of such 

 selections of the picking out of the soft from the hard, of 

 the soluble from the insoluble, of the fusible from the 

 infusible, by natural agencies to which we are certainly not 

 in the habit of ascribing consciousness. 



But that which wind and sea are to a sandy beach, the 

 sum of influences, which we term the " conditions of 

 existence," is to living organisms. The weak are sifted 

 out from the strong. A frosty night " selects " the hardy 

 plants in a plantation from among the tender ones as 

 effectually as if it were the wind, and they, the sand and 

 pebbles, of our illustration ; or, on the other hand, as if 

 the intelligence of a gardener had been operative in cutting 

 the weaker organisms down. The thistle, which has spread 

 over the Pampas, to the destruction of native plants, 

 has been more effectually " selected " by the unconscious 

 operation of natural conditions than if a thousand agri- 

 culturists had spent their time in sowing it. 



It is one of Mr. Darwin's many great services to Biological 

 science that he has demonstrated the significance of these 

 facts. He has shown that given variation and given 

 change of conditions the inevitable result is the exercise 

 of such an influence upon organisms that one is helped and 

 another is impeded ; one tends to predominate, another to 

 disappear ; and thus the living world bears within itself, 



