DARWIN'S VARIATIONS. i8j 



thougk in the later ones he had attributed still more ; 

 but if there was any considerable change of position, 

 it should not have been left to be toilsomely collected 

 by collation of editions, and comparison of passages 

 far removed from one another in other books. If his 

 mind had undergone the modification supposed by Mr. 

 Spencer, Mr. Darwin should have said so in a pro- 

 minent passage of some later edition of the " Origin 

 of Species." He should have said — "In my earlier 

 editions I underrated, as now seems probable, the 

 eflfect of use and disuse as purveyors of the slight 

 successive modifications whose accumulation in the 

 ordinary course of things results in specific difference, 

 and I laid too much stress on the accumulation of 

 merely accidental variations ; " having said this, he 

 should have summarised the reasons that had made 

 him change his mind, and given a list of the most 

 important cases in which he had seen fit to alter what 

 he had originally written. If Mr. Darwin had dealt 

 thus with us we should have readily condoned all the 

 mistakes he would have been at all likely to have 

 made, for we should have known him as one who was 

 trying to help us, tidy us up, keep us straight, and 

 enable us to use our judgments to the best advan- 

 tage. The public will forgive many errors alike of 

 taste and judgment, where it feels that a writer per- 

 sistently desires this. 



I can only remember a couple of sentences in 

 the later editions of the " Origin of Species " in 

 which Mr. Darwin directly admits a change of opinion, 

 as regards the main causes of organic modification. 



