THE FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION. 113 



establishing a new breed of dogs, and this is at any 

 rate not laying much stress on functionally produced 

 modifications. Again, when writing of the dog, he 

 speaks of variations arising " by some chance common 

 enough with nature," * and clearly does not contemplate 

 function as the sole cause of modification. Practically, 

 though I grant I should be less able to quote passages 

 in support of my opinion than I quite like, I do not 

 doubt that his position was much the same as that of 

 his successors, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck. 



Lamarck is more vulnerable than either Erasmus 

 Darwin or Buffon on the score of unwillingness to 

 assign its full share to mere chance, but I do not for a 

 moment believe his comparative reticence to have been 

 caused by failure to see that the chapter of accidents is 

 a fateful one. He saw that the cunning or functional 

 side had been too much lost sight of, and therefore 

 insisted on it, but he did not mean to say that there 

 is no such thing as luck, " Let us suppose," he says, 

 "that a grass growing in a low-lying meadow, gets 

 carried by some accident to the brow of a neighbouring 

 hill, where the soil is still damp enough for the plant 

 to be able to exist." t Or again — " With sufficient 

 time, favourable conditions of life, successive changes 

 in the condition of the globe, and the power of new 

 surroundings and habits to modify the organs of living 

 bodies, all animal and vegetable forms have been 

 imperceptibly rendered such as we now see them." | 

 Who can doubt that accident is here regarded as a 



I * See Evolution Old and New, p. 122. 

 ' t Phil. Zool., i. p. 80. t Ibid., i. 82. 



H 



