DARWIN AND DESCENT. 227 



founded on well-considered analogies. There is a 

 natural order in every department of nature ; it is tlie 

 order in which its several component items have been 

 successively developed." * The point, however, which 

 should more particularly engage our attention is that 

 Mr. Darwin in the passage last quoted uses "natural 

 selection " and " descent " as though they were con- 

 vertible terms. 



Again : — 



" Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to 

 explain this similarity of pattern in members of the 

 same class by utility or the doctrine of final causes. 

 . . . On the ordinary view of the independent creation 

 of each heing, we can only say that so it is. . . . The 

 explanation is manifest on the theory of the natural 

 selection of successive slight modifications," &c. (p. 435). 



This now stands — " The explanation is to a large 

 extent simple, on the theory of the selection of successive, 

 slight modifications." I do not like " a large extent " 

 of simplicity ; but, waiving this, the point at issue is 

 not whether the ordinary course of things ensures a 

 quasi-selection of the types that are best adapted to 

 their surroundings, with accumulation of modification 

 in various directions, and hence wide eventual differ- 

 ence between species descended from common pro- 

 genitors — no evolutionist since 1 7 50 has doubted 

 this — but whether a general principle underlies the 

 modifications from among which the quasi-selection is 

 made, or whether they are destitute of such principle 

 and referable, as far as we are concerned, to chance 

 * Phil. Zool., torn. i. pp. 34, 35. 



