DARWIN AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 219 



But if man's selection cannot double, treble, quadruple, centuple, 

 any special divergence from a parent stock, why should we 

 imagine that natural selection should have that power ? When 

 we have granted that the ' struggle for life ' might produce the 

 pouter or the fantail, or any divergence man can produce, we 

 need not feel one whit the more disposed to grant that it can 

 produce divergences beyond man's power. The difference be- 

 tween six years and six myriads, blinding by a confused sense 

 of immensity, leads men to say hastily that if six or sixty years 

 can make a pouter out of a common pigeon, six myriads may 

 change a pigeon to something like a thrush ; but this seems no 

 more accurate than to conclude that because we observe that a 

 cannon-ball has traversed a mile in a minute, therefore in an 

 hour it will be sixty miles off, and in the course of ages that it 

 will reach the fixed stars. This really might be the conclusion 

 drawn by a savage seeing a cannon-ball shot off by a power the 

 nature of which was wholly unknown to him, and traversing a 

 vast distance with a velocity confusing his brain, and removing 

 the case from the category of stones and arrows, which he well 

 knows will not go far, though they start fast. Even so do the 

 myriads of years confuse our speculations, and seem to remove 

 natural selection from man's selection ; yet Darwin would be the 

 first to allow that the same laws probably or possibly govern 

 the variation, whether the selection be slow or rapid. If the 

 intelligent savage were told, that though the cannon-ball started 

 very fast, it went slower and slower every instant, he would 

 probably conclude that it would not reach the stars, but presently 

 come to rest like his stone and arrow! Let us examine whether 

 there be not a true analogy between this case and the variation 

 of domestic animals. 



We all believe that a breeder, starting business with a con- 

 siderable stock of average horses, could, by selection, in a very 

 few generations, obtain horses able to run much faster than 

 any of their sires or dams ; in time perhaps he would obtain 

 descendants running twice as fast as their ancestors, and pos- 

 sibly equal to our race-horses. But would not the difference 

 in speed between each successive generation be less and less ? 

 Hundreds of skilful men are yearly breeding thousands of 

 racers. Wealth and honour await the man who can breed one 



