iSa LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



mention in this peroration and stretto, as it were, of 

 the whole matter, in which special prominence should 

 be given to the special feature of the work, where 

 ought they to be made important ? 



Mr. Darwin immediately goes on: "A ratio of exist* 

 ence so high as to lead to a struggle for life, and aa a 

 consequence to natural selection, entailing divergence 

 of character and the extinction of less improved 

 forms ; " so that natural selection turns up after all. 

 Yes — in the letters that compose it, but not in the 

 spirit ; not in the special sense up to this time 

 attached to it in the " Origin of Species." The expres- 

 sion as used here is one with which Erasmus Darwin 

 would have found little fault, for it means not as else- 

 where in Mr. Darwin's book and on his title-page the 

 preservation of " favoured " or lucky varieties, but the 

 preservation of varieties that have come to be varieties 

 through the causes assigiied in the preceding two 

 or three lines of Mr. Darwin's sentence; and these 

 are mainly functional or Erasmus-Darwinian ; for the 

 indirect action of the conditions of life is mainly 

 functional, and the direct action is admitted on all 

 hands to be but small. 



It now appears more plainly, as insisted upon on 

 an earlier page, that there is not one natural selection 

 and one survival of the fittest, but two, inasmuch as 

 there are two classes of variations from which nature 

 (supposing no exception taken to her personification) 

 can select. The bottles have the same labels, and they 

 are of the same colour, but the one holds brandy, and 

 the other toast and water. Nature can, by a figure 



