340 Darwin, and after Darwin. 
Darwinians are both logically and historically justified 
in employing the word “accidental” as the word 
which serves most properly to convey the meaning 
that they intend—namely, variations due to causes 
accidental to the struggle for existence. Similarly, 
when it is said that variations are “ spontaneous,” 
or even “ fortuitous,’ nothing further is meant than 
that we do not know the causes which lead to them, and 
that, so far as the principle of selection is concerned, 
it is immaterial what these causes may be. Or, to 
revert to our former illustration, the various weights 
of different kinds of earths are no doubt all due to 
definite causes; but, in relation to the selective 
action of the gold-washer, all the different weights 
of whatever kinds of earth he may happen to in- 
clude in his washing-apparatus are, strictly speaking, 
accidental. And as at different washings he meets 
with different proportions of heavy earths with light 
ones, and as these “variations” are immaterial to him, 
he may colloquially speak of them as “ fortuitous,” or 
due to “ chance,” even though he knows that at each 
washing they must have been determined by definite 
causes. 
More adequately to deal with this merely formal 
objection, however, would involve more logic-chop- 
ping than is desirable on the present occasion. But 
I have already dealt with it fully elsewhere,—viz. in 
The Contemporary Review for June, 1888, to which 
therefore I may refer any one who is interested in 
dialectics of this kind 4. 
1 Within the last few months this objection has been presented anew 
by Mr. D. Syme, whose book On the Modification of Organisms exhibits 
a curious combination of shrewd criticisms with almost ludicrous mis- 
