122 NATURAL SELECTION AND 



institution, or practice, or idea is called a 

 "variation" by an evolutionist, the historian 

 seems to have good ground for his complaint 

 that nothing is thereby explained, that we 

 are merely giving a name to the fact and 

 leaving it as much a mystery as before. 1 Yet, 

 if we fully recognise that to say something is 

 a "spontaneous variation" is only to declare 

 our ienorance of how it came about, no harm is 

 done : and it is well to be modest and confess 

 our ignorance sometimes, though of course 

 there is no special merit in the mere use of the 

 Darwinian phrase. " Instead of begging in- 

 cipient ' variations/ and leaving the explanation 

 of their rise entirely unattempted, the student of 

 institutions has to insist 011 nothing more un- 

 compromisingly ', than on the explanation of what 

 Darwinists eall 'variations' (p. 68). An 

 explanation, certainly, if possible ; but when we 

 cannot get one, we must go without. And 

 what does Dr. Reich understand by an ex- 

 planation ? I quote a passage from the next 

 page : 



1 For the theory of natural selection it is, of course, not 

 necessary that the causes of a variation should be known. 

 If the variation is a fact, that is all that is needed. 



