CREATION BY LAW. 231 



It is the more important to remember this dis- 

 tinction, because it seems to me that Mr Darwin 

 himself frequently forgets it. Not only does he 

 speak of Natural Selection "producing" this and 

 that modification of structure, but he undertakes 

 to affirm of one class of changes that they can be 

 produced, and of another class of changes that 

 they cannot be produced, by this process.* 



Now, what are the changes for the preservation 

 of which Natural Selection does, in some sense, 

 account ? They are such changes, and these only, 

 as are of some direct use to the Organism in the 

 "struggle for existence." Any change which has 

 not this direct value, is not provided for in the 

 theory. All structures, therefore, are unaccounted 

 for — not only as respects their origin, but even as 

 respects their preservation — in which the variations 

 have no other value than mere beauty or variety. 

 Accordingly, Mr Darwin is tempted, as I have 

 already had occasion to observe, to deny that 

 any such structures exist in Nature. Any theory 

 of which this denial is really a necessary part 

 is self-condemned. Yet a theory may be good 



* Origin of Species, p. 200 (1st edition.) 



