MR. DARWIN ON NATURAL SELECTION. 367 



many generations could not run so well as his ancestors 

 in the direct line. But can the fact of his uncles and 

 aunts running less well than his fathers and mothers 

 be a means of his fathers and mothers coming to run 

 heUeir them they used to run ? 



If the reader will bear in mind the idea of the runners 

 in a race, it will help him to see the point at issue 

 between Mr. Darwin and Lamarck. Perhaps also the 

 double meaning of the word race, as expressing equally 

 a breed and a competition, may not be wholly with- 

 out significance. What we want to be told is, not that 

 a runner will win the prize if he can run " ever such a 

 little " faster than his fellows — we know this — but by 

 what process he comes to be able to run ever such a 

 little faster. 



" So, again," continues Mr. Darwin, " it is difficult to 

 avoid personifying nature, but I mean by nature only 

 the aggregate action and product of many natural 

 laws, and by laws the sequence of events as ascertained 

 by us." • 



This, again, is raising up a dead man in order to 

 knock him down. Nature has been personified for more 

 than two thousand years, and every one understands 

 that nature is no more really a woman than hope or 

 justice, or than God is like the pictures of the mediaeval 

 painters; no one whose objection was worth notice 

 could have objected to the personification of nature. 



Mr. Darwin concludes : — 



" With a little familiarity, such superficial objections 

 will be forgotten." * 



* ' Origin of Species,' p. 63. 



