TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 113 
Now in these passages, and in every other part of his work in which he touches 
on the subject, Mr. Darwin appears to me to overlook, or at least not to make 
sufficient allowance for, the progressive changes which are always taking place in 
the conditions of existence of almost every living creature, although his book teems 
with proofs of it. But there is another oversight running through the work, and 
strongly exhibited in the passages just cited. Mr. Darwin speaks of natural selec- 
tion as accumulating profitable variations, whereas it is quite evident that, at utmost, 
it can only repeat them. Natural selection acts, as Mr. Darwin shows, by preserving 
the serviceable variations, and discarding the unserviceable or injurious ; but as it 
does not produce them, so neither of itself can it strengthen them: that, I maintain, 
is done by the conditions of existence acting on the variability of the animals which 
are placed among them. Mr. Darwin elsewhere writes :—‘ Seedlings from the same 
fruit, and young from the same litter, sometimes considerably differ from each other, 
though both the young and the parents, as Miiller has remarked, have apparently 
been exposed to exactly the same conditions of life ; and this shows how unimportant 
the direct effects of the conditions of life are in comparison with the laws of repro- 
duction and of growth and of inheritance ; for had the conditions been direct, if 
any of the young had varied, probably all would have varied in the same manner.” 
I deny this probability. If Mr. Darwin has certainly established anything, it is 
this, that animals do possess a capacity for variation in almost every direction. 
But it is equally certain that this capacity for variation differs very much in 
different individuals, so that the same influences do not produce the same effects, 
though they tend to do so, And therefore even if we assume (which I am not 
prepared to admit) that the conditions of life are the same for seedlings of the same 
fruit, and young of the same litter during the period of gestation, still it would not 
follow that they were either absolutely or comparatively unimportant, or that the 
variations which showed themselves were not due to them, In a word, I contend 
that the capacity for variation is in the animal, but that it depends in a great 
measure for its development on that assemblage of circumstances which we deno- 
minate the conditions of its existence ; and the changes, which in the greater part 
of animals are slowly taking place in those conditions, impress on the variations 
a certain definite direction, while natural selection tends to the preservation of the 
most favourable of the variations thus produced. ‘At the same time I am by no 
means prepared to deny the influence which Mr. Darwin attributes to the laws of 
reproduction and growth: all I maintain is that he underrates the influence of 
the conditions of life, and overlooks that of the changes which are slowly but con- 
tinually taking place in them, at least for most organized beings; and he further 
employs language which seems to imply that natural selection has something to do 
with the production of favourable varieties, when all his arguments go to prove that 
it tends only to the preservation of those which have thes produced by other 
causes. I maintain therefore that two classes of inquiries ought simultaneously to 
be carried on—one into the variability of organized beings, and another into the 
yariations of the conditions of their existence. 
After illustrating these views at some length, the author of the paper concluded 
as follows :— 
This is not the place for entering on the theological aspects of the question. 
Indeed, I am forbidden, I believe, by the rules of the Association to do so. So far 
from regretting this prohibition, I cordially approve it, regarding it not merely as a 
regulation of wise expediency, but as the embodiment of a sound principle. I 
maintain that the intrusion of Scriptural arguments into scientific investigations is 
as theologically erroneous as it is scientifically mischievous. Let us push our 
investigations of the Creator’s works as far as we can in every direction, without 
the slightest fear that scientific truth can ever clash with moral and religious truth ; 
and let us apply to the theory before us what Galileo said of his when exposed to 
objections similar in principle to those which had been urged against Mr. Darwin’s, 
g Guin ipsa philosophia talibus e disputationibus non nisi beneficium recepit. 
Nam si vera proponit homo ingeniosus veritatisque amans nova ad eam accessio 
fiet ; sin falsa, refutatione eorum priores tanto magis stabilientur.”’ 
1862, . 8 
