286 CREATION BY LAW. 
ined to do any harm. It is simply not necessary, and 
is therefore withheld! We ought surely to have been 
told how this fact is consistent with beauty being “ an 
end in itself,” and with the statement of its being 
given to natural objects “for its own sake.” 
Llow new Forms are produced by Variation and 
Selection. 
Let us now consider another of the popular objec- 
‘tions which the Duke of Argyll thus sets forth :— 
“Mr. Darwin does not pretend to have discovered 
any law or rule, according to which new Forms have 
been born from old Forms. He does not hold that 
outward conditions, however changed, are sufficient to 
account for them. . . His theory seems to be far 
better than a mere theory—to be an established scien- 
tific truth—in so far as it accounts, in part at least, 
for the success and establishment and spread of new 
Forms when they have arisen. But it does not even 
suggest the law under which, or by or according to 
which, such new Forms are introduced. Natural Se- 
lection can do nothing, except with the materials 
presented to its hands. It cannot select except among 
the things open to selection. . . Strictly speaking, 
therefore, Mr. Darwin’s theory is not a theory on 
the Origin of Species at all, but only a theory on the 
causes which lead to the relative success or failure 
of such new forms as may be born into the world.” 
(“ Reign of Law,” p. 230.) 
In this, and many other passages in his work, the 
