226 SECRETS OF ANIMAL LIFE 
experiments in self-expression just as the explicit 
organism is ever doing. There is no need to be 
frightened by the word fortuitous, so often used as 
a reproach to Darwinism, for it is just a short way 
of saying, as Darwin did, that “our ignorance of 
the laws of variation is profound.” Mr. Hookham 
has given us the interesting information (New 
Statesman, 3rd March 1917) that Darwin approved 
of his vivid illustration of Nature’s fortuitousness. 
“Whereas if man wanted to hit a mark, he aimed 
at it; and, if he aimed well enough, he hit it; 
Nature’s plan was to throw up grains of sand in all 
the winds through all time, and eventually she hit 
it too, but she could not be said to aim.” But we 
do not think that we can infer from Darwin’s ap- 
probation of Mr. Hookham’s image that he meant 
to be committed to pure chance, except that, as he 
explains, he could not regard the outcrop of varia- 
tions as due to design or purpose. Taking a wider 
sweep, he wrote to another correspondent: “If we 
consider the whole universe, the mind refuses to 
look at it as the outcome of chance.”’ His emphasis 
on “the principle of correlated variability, when 
one part varies other parts vary,” also throws light 
on what he meant by “ chance.”’ But, in any case, 
we mean by Darwinism not the ipsissima verba of 
Charles Darwin, but the living doctrine that has 
legitimately developed from his central idea of the 
natural selection of intrinsic variations or mutations, 
—a doctrine which is in process of assimilating a 
multitude of new facts in regard to the definiteness of 
