226 SECRETS OF ANIMAL LIFE 



experiments in self-expression just as the explicit 

 organism is ever doing. There is no need to be 

 frightened by the word fortuitous, so often used as 

 a reproach to Darwinism, for it is just a short way 

 of saying, as Darwin did, that " our ignorance of 

 the laws of variation is profound." Mr. Hookham 

 has given us the interesting information (New 

 Statesman, 3rd March 1917) that Darwin approved 

 of his vivid illustration of Nature's fortuitousness. 

 " Whereas if man wanted to hit a mark, he aimed 

 at it; and, if he aimed well enough, he hit it; 

 Nature's plan was to throw up grains of sand in all 

 the winds through all time, and eventually she hit 

 it too, but she could not be said to aim." But we 

 do not think that we can infer from Darwin's ap- 

 probation of Mr. Hookham's image that he meant 

 to be committed to pure chance, except that, as he 

 explains, he could not regard the outcrop of varia- 

 tions as due to design or purpose. Taking a wider 

 sweep, he wrote to another correspondent : "If we 

 consider the whole universe, the mind refuses to 

 look at it as the outcome of chance." His emphasis 

 on " the principle of correlated variability, when 

 one part varies other parts vary," also throws light 

 on what he meant by " chance." But, in any case, 

 we mean by Darwinism not the ipsissima yerba of 

 Charles Darwin, but the living doctrine that has 

 legitimately developed from his Central idea of the 

 natural selection of intrinsic variations or mutations, 

 a doctrine which is in process of assimilating a 

 multitude of new facts in regard to the definiteness of 



