i84 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



How sHuffling the first of these is I have already 

 shown in "Life and Habit," p. 260, and in "Evolu- 

 tion Old and New," p. 3 S 9 ; I need not, therefore, say- 

 more here, especially as there has been no rejoinder 

 to what I then said. Curiously enough the sentence 

 does not bear out Mr. Spencer's contention that Mr. 

 Darwin in his later years leaned more decidedly towards 

 functionally produced modifications, for it runs : ■"■ — 

 " In the earlier editions of this work I underrated, as 

 now seems probable, the frequency and importance of 

 modifications due," not, as Mr. Spencer would have 

 us believe, to use and disuse, but " to spontaneous 

 variability," by which can only be intended, " to varia- 

 tions in no way connected with use and disuse," as 

 not being assignable to any known cause of general 

 application, and referable as far as we are concerned 

 to accident only ; so that he gives the natural survival 

 of the luckiest, which is indeed his distinctive feature, 

 if it deserve to be called a feature at all, greater pro- 

 minence than ever. Nevertheless there is no change 

 in his concluding paragraph, which still remains an 

 embodiment of the views of Erasmus Darwin, and 

 Lamarck. 



The other passage is on p. 421 of the edition of 

 1876. It stands: — "I have now recapitulated the 

 facts and considerations which have thoroughly " (why 

 " thoroughly " ?) " convinced me that species have been 

 modified during a long course of descent. This has 

 been efiected chiefly through the natural selection of 

 numerous, successive, slight, favourable variations; 

 * Origin of Species, ed. 6, 1876, p. 171. 



