DARWIN'S VARIATIONS. i8i 



'of speech, be said to select from variations that are 

 mainly functional or from variations that are mainly 

 accidental; in the first case she will eventually get 

 an accumulation of variation, and widely different types 

 will come into existence ; in the second, the variations 

 will not occur with sufiicient steadiness for accumula- 

 tion to be possible. In the body of Mr. Darwin's 

 book the variations are supposed to be mainly due to 

 accident, and function, though not denied all efiScacy, 

 is declared to be the greatly subordinate factor ; natu- 

 ral selection, therefore, has been hitherto throughout 

 tantamount to luck ; in the peroration the position 

 is reversed in toto ; the selection is now made from 

 variations into which luck has entered so little that 

 it may be neglected, the greatly preponderating 

 factor being function ; here, then, natural selection is 

 tantamount to cunning. We are such slaves of words 

 that, seeing the words " natural selection " employed — 

 and forgetting that the results ensuing on natural 

 selection will depend entirely on -what it is that is 

 selected from, so that the gist of the matter lies in 

 this and not in the words "natural selection" — it 

 escaped us that a change of front had been made, and 

 a conclusion entirely alien to the tenor of the whole 

 book smuggled into the last paragraph as the one 

 which it had been written to support; the book 

 preached luck, the peroration cunning. 



And there can be no doubt Mr. Darwin intended 

 that the change of front should escape us ; for it 

 cannot be believed that he did not perfectly well know 

 what he had done. Mr. Darwin edited and re-edited 



