126 LUCK, OR CUNNING ? 



gaining ground, adding field to field and farm to farm, 

 and becoming year by year more capable and prosper- 

 ous. Given time — of which there is no scant in the 

 matter of organic development — and cunning will do 

 more with ill luck than folly with good. People do 

 not hold six trumps every hand for a dozen games of 

 whist running, if they do not keep a card or two up 

 their sleeves. Cunning, if it can keep its head above 

 water at all, will beat mere luck unaided by cunning, 

 no matter what start luck may have had, if the race 

 be a fairly long one. Growth is a kind of success 

 which does indeed come to some organisms with less 

 effort than to others, but it cannot be maintained and 

 improved upon without pains and effort. A foolish 

 organism and its fortuitous variation will be soon 

 parted, for, as a general rule, unless the variation has 

 so much connection with the organism's past habits 

 and ways of thought as to be in no proper sense of 

 the word " fortuitous," the organism will not know 

 what to do with it when it has got it, no matter how 

 favourable it may be, and it is little likely to be 

 handed down to descendants. Indeed the kind of 

 people who get on best in the world — and what test 

 to a Darwinian can be comparable to this ? — commonly 

 do insist on cunning rather than on luck, sometimes 

 perhaps even unduly ; speaking, at least, from experi- 

 ence, I have generally found myself more or less of a 

 failure with those Darwinians to whom I have endea- 

 voured to excuse my shortcomings on the score of 

 luck. 



It may be said that the contention that the nature 



