92 LUCK, OR CUNNING ? 



cation without implying a quasi-selective power oja 

 the part of nature ; but even with Mr. Charles 

 Darwin the power is only quasi-selective; there is 

 no conscious choice, and hence there is nothing that 

 can in strictness be called selection. 



It is indeed true that the younger Darwin gave the 

 words " natural selection " the importance which of late 

 years they have assumed ; he probably adopted them 

 unconsciously from the passage of Mr. Matthew's quoted 

 above, but he ultimately said,* " In the literal sense of 

 the word {sic) no doubt natural selection is a false term," 

 as personifying a fact, making it exercise the con- 

 scious choice without which there can be no selection, 

 and generally crediting it with the discharge of func- 

 tions which can only be ascribed legitimately to living 

 and reasoning beings. Granted, however, that while 

 Mr. Charles Darwin adopted the expression natural 

 selection and admitted it to be a bad one, his grand- 

 father did not use it at all; still Mr. Darwin did 

 not mean the natural selection which Mr. Matthew 

 and those whose opinions he was epitomising meant. 

 Mr. Darwin meant the selection to be made from 

 variations into which purpose enters to only a small 

 extent comparatively. The difference, therefore, be- 

 tween the older evolutionists and their successor does 

 not lie in the acceptance by the more recent writer 

 of a quasi-selective power in nature which his pre- 

 decessors denied, but in the background — hidden be- 

 hind the words natural selection, which have served 

 to cloak it — in the views which the old and the new 



* Origin of Species, p. 49 ed. 6. 



