Essays on Life 



cancer which, if the smallest fibre be left un- 

 excised, will grow again, and kill any system 

 on to which it is allowed to fasten. Mr. 

 Wallace, therefore, may well be excused if he 

 casts longing eyes towards Weismannism. 



And what was Mr. Darwin's system ? Who 

 can make head or tail of the inextricable 

 muddle in which he left it ? The " Origin 

 of Species " in its latest shape is the reduction 

 of hedging to an absurdity. How did Mr. 

 Darwin himself leave it in the last chapter of 

 the last edition of the " Origin of Species " ? 

 He wrote : 



" I have now recapitulated the facts and con- 

 siderations which have thoroughly convinced 

 me that species have been modified during a 

 long course of descent. This has been effected 

 chiefly through the natural selection of numer- 

 ous, successive, slight, favourable variations ; 

 aided in an important manner by the inherited 

 effects of the use and disuse of parts, and in 

 an unimportant manner that is, in relation 

 to adaptive structures whether past or present 

 by the direct action of external conditions, 



and by variations which seem to us in our 



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