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ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
though he was inclined to admit that it might be induced to some extent by 
the action of what he called the conditions of life. 
Wallace has well set forth Darwin’s point of view concerning the general 
nature of variation, as to which he says: “that variation is always present in 
ample amount; that it exists in all parts and organs; that these vary, for the 
most part, independently, so that any required combination of variations can 
be secured; and finally that all variation is necessarily either in excess or 
defect of the mean condition, and that, consequently, the right or favourable 
variations are so frequently present that the unerring power of natural selec¬ 
tion never wants materials to work upon.” 1 
Darwin, however, as I have before remarked, for the purposes of his 
philosophy, assumed variation as a starting-point without offering a distinct 
explanation of it, and in this attitude he has been justified by the negative 
results obtained by the latest research. But he insisted as strongly as he 
could that if, according to Lamarck, “the right variations occurred, and no 
others, natural selection would be superfluous,” 2 and, of course his system 
could then claim no great superiority over Lamarck’s. It seems almost 
self-evident to us now that if there are other than useful variations, or other 
than useful parts, or if there are variations or organs either more or less use¬ 
ful, natural selection must be the factor to determine the survival of the fit, 
or adapted, and the extermination of the unfit, or unadapted. As Darwin 
says in effect, selection is dispensed with only if development follows lines of 
variation which are pre-determined or inevitable, as it practically does 
from the Lamarckian point of view. There was, therefore, a radical differ¬ 
ence between the final position assumed by Darwin and the ground occupied 
by Lamarck in his second law, though Darwin seems to have agreed with 
Lamarck, sometimes more and sometimes less, on unessential points. 
One of the few subjects on which Darwin may be said to have been 
“touchy,” particularly in later years, was the imputation to him of Neo- 
Lamarckian beliefs. Lyell incautiously wrote to him of “Lamarck’s views 
improved by yours,” and made a similar reference in the first edition of his 
work on “The Antiquity of Man,” which brought out the following protest 
from Darwin, in a letter dated March 12, 1863: 
You refer repeatedly to my views as a modification of Lamarck’s doctrine of 
development and progression. If this is your deliberate opinion there is nothing 
to be said, but it does not seem so to me. Plato, Buffon, my grandfather before 
Lamarck and others propounded the obvious view that if species were not created 
separately they must have descended from other species, and I can see nothing else 
in common between the “Origin” and Lamarck. 3 
1 “ Darwinism,” p. 424. 1889. 
- “ Life and Letters,” Vol. Ill, p. 85. 1887. 
3 Ibid., p. 14. 
