CREATION BY LAW. 291 
This appears to be 2 complete answer tothe theory, 
that variation sufficient in amount to be accumulated 
in a given direction must be the direct act of the 
Creative Mind, but it is also sufficiently condemned 
by being so entirely unnecessary. The facility with 
which man obtains new races, depends chiefly upon 
the number of individuals he can procure to select 
from. When hundreds of florists or breeders are all 
aiming at the same object, the work of change goes on 
rapidly. But a common species in nature contains a 
thousand- or a million-fold more individuals than any 
domestic race; and survival of the fittest must unerr- 
ingly preserve all that vary in the right direction, 
not only in obvious characters but in minute details, 
not only in external but in internal organs; so that 
if the materials are sufficient for the needs of man, 
there can be no want of them to fulfil the grand pur- 
pose of keeping up a supply of modified organisms, 
exactly adapted to the changed conditions that are 
always occurring in the inorganic world. 
The Objection that there are Limits to Variation. 
Having now, I believe, fairly answered the chief ob- 
jections of the Duke of Argyll, I proceed to notice one 
or two of those adduced in an able and argumentative 
essay on the “ Origin of Species” in the North British 
Review for July, 1867. The writer first attempts to 
prove that there are strict limits to variation. When 
we begin to select variations in any one direction, the 
process is comparatively rapid, but after a considerablo 
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