Centennial of Charles Darwin 377 



species gives birth to a reproduction of itself, with some 

 measure of variation. Arguing from what is now the 

 order regulating all life, we are justified in believing 

 that it has been so since life first began upon the earth. 



Heredity is a persistent fact, so far as our observa- 

 tion can carry us. But within the limits of species 

 there is found an enormous measure of variation. 

 Neither Darwin nor any one else has exaggerated 

 this undoubted fact. We often hear the similes, as 

 like as two blades of grass, or two peas; whereas no two 

 blades of grass, or two leaves on a tree, or two peas, are 

 seen to be alike when looked at through a powerful lens. 

 Yet none of these variations are found to leap over the 

 bars that fence them off from other species. It is a 

 wonderful and curious fact that miscegenation is pro- 

 hibited in the realms of life. 



Mr. Darwin, indeed, starts out in his quest with cor- 

 rect ideas, speaking of the obvious objection, "that the 

 term 'selection' implies conscious choice in the animals 

 which become modified, and it has been urged that as 

 plants have no volition natural selection is not applicable 

 to them. In the literal sense of the word, no doubt, 

 natural selection is a false term." Yet he frequently 

 juggles with the word in the course of his narrative, and 

 in his deductions from the facts he relates. And while 

 he thus guards himself, at the outset of his constructive 

 work, his unwary readers are led to treat literally what 

 he, when challenged, only means figuratively. Further 

 on he adds: "So again it is difficult to avoid personi- 

 fying the word 'Nature,' but I mean by Nature only the 

 aggregate action and product of many natural laws and 

 by laws the sequence of events as ascertained by us." 

 I do not charge him with any intentional unfairness or 

 desire to mislead, but I take it that being so confident of 

 the truth of his theory and so fully enamoured of it, he 

 thought everything was to be interpreted in the light 

 of it. 



Darwin made free use of the observations and specu- 



