122 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



its bond, but will take the half for the whole without 

 even looking closely at the coin given to make sure 

 that it is not counterfeit Through the haste and high 

 pressure of business, errors arise continually, and these 

 errors give us the shocks of which our consciousness 

 is compounded. Our whole conscious life, therefore, 

 grows out of memory and out of the power of associa- 

 tion, in virtue of which not only does the right half 

 pass for the whole, but the wrong half not infrequently 

 passes current for it also, without being challenged and 

 found out till, as it were, the accounts come to be 

 balanced, and it is found that they will not do so. 



Variations are an organism's way of getting over an 

 unexpected discrepancy between its resources as shown 

 by the fly-leaves of its own cheques and the universe's 

 pass-book; the universe is generally right, or would 

 be upheld as right if the matter were to come before 

 the not too incorruptible courts of nature, and in nine 

 cases out of ten the organism has made the error in 

 its own favour, so that it must now pay or die. It 

 can only pay by altering its mode of life, and how long 

 is it likely to be before a new departure in its mode 

 of life comes out in its own person and in those of its 

 family ? Granted it will at first come out in their 

 appearance only, but there can be no change in appear- 

 ance without some slight corresponding organic modifi- 

 cation. In practice there is usually compromise in 

 these matters. The universe, it it does not give an 

 organism short shrift and eat it at once, will commonly 

 abate something of its claim; it gets tricked out of 

 an additional moiety by the organism ; the organism 



