64 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



burglar's jemmy is designed, had nevertheless found 

 its way back again, and that though, as I insisted in 

 "Evolution, Old and New," and "Unconscious Memory," 

 it must now be placed within the organism instead 

 of outside it, as " was formerly the case," it was not 



on that account any the less design, as well as 



interesting. 



I should like to have seen Mr. Darwin say this 

 more explicitly. Indeed I should have liked to have 

 seen Mr. Darwin say anything at all about the mean- 

 ing of which there could be no mistake, and without 

 contradicting himself elsewhere ; but this was not Mr. 

 Darwin's manner. 



In passing I will give another example of Mr. 

 Darwin's manner when he did not quite dare even to 

 hedge. It is to be found in the preface which he 

 wrote to Professor Weismann's " Studies in the Theory 

 of Descent," published in 1882. 



" Several distinguished naturalists," says Mr. Darwin, 

 "maintain with much confidence that organic beings 

 tend to vary and to rise in the scale, independently of 

 the conditions to which they and their progenitors 

 have been exposed; whilst others maintain that all 

 variation is due to such exposure, though the manner 

 in which the environment acts is as yet quite unknown. 

 At the present time there is hardly any question in 

 biology of more importance than this of the nature 

 and causes of variability, and the reader will find 

 in the present work an able discussion on the whole 

 subject, which will probably lead him to pause 

 before he admits the existence of an innate tendency 



