Ii6 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



able accidental variation would have accumulated 

 so long as the organism continued to exist at all, in- 

 asmuch as this would be preserved whenever it 

 happened to occur, while every other would be lost 

 in the struggle of competitive forms ; but even in the 

 lowest forms of life there is more than one condition 

 in respect of which the organism must be supposed 

 sensitive, and there are as many directions in which 

 variations may be favourable as there are conditions 

 of the environment that affect the organism. We 

 cannot conceive of a living form as having a power 

 of adaptation limited to one direction only; the 

 elasticity which admits of a not being "extreme to 

 mark that which is done amiss " in one direction will 

 commonly admit of it in as many directions as there 

 are possible favourable modes of variation ; the number 

 of these, as has been just said, depends upon the 

 number of the conditions of the environment that 

 affect the organism, and these last, though in the 

 long run and over considerable intervals of time 

 tolerably constant, are over shorter intervals liable to 

 frequent and great changes ; so that there is nothing in 

 Mr. Charles Darwin's system of modification through 

 the natural survival of the lucky, to prevent gain in 

 one direction one year from being lost irretrievably 

 in the next, through the greater success of some in 

 no way correlated variation, the fortunate possessors 

 of which alone, survive. This, in its turn, is as likely 

 as not to disappear shortly through the arising of some 

 difficulty in some entirely new direction, and so on ; 

 nor, if function be regarded as of small effect in 



