272 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



has becoQie accepted as rapidly, if I am not mistaken, 

 as the Copemican theory, or as Newton's theory of 

 gravitation. 



When Professor Ray Lankester goes on to speak of 

 the " un demonstrable agencies " " arbitrarily asserted " 

 to exist by Professor Semper, he is again presuming 

 on the ignorance of his readers. Professor Semper's 

 agencies are in no way more undemonstrable than Mr. 

 Darwin's are. Mr. Darwin was perfectly cogent as long 

 as he stuck to Lamarck's demonstration ; his arguments 

 were sound as long as they were Lamarck's, or develop- 

 ments of, and riders upon, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, 

 and Lamarck, and almost incredibly silly when they 

 were his own. Fortunately the greater part of the 

 " Origin of Species " is devoted to proving the theory 

 of descent with modification, by arguments against 

 which no exception would have been taken by Mr, 

 Darwin's three great precursors, except in so far as the 

 variations whose accumulation results in specific difier- 

 ence are supposed to be fortuitous — and, to do Mr. 

 Darwin justice, the fortuitousness, though always withia 

 hail, is kept as far as possible in the background. 



" Mr. Darwin's arguments," says Professor Ray Lan- 

 kester, " rest on the proved existence of minute, many- 

 sided, irrelative variations not produced by directly 

 transforming agents." Mr. Darwin throughout the 

 body of the " Origin of Species " is not supposed to 

 know what his variations are or are not produced by ; 

 if they come, they come, and if they do not come, they 

 do not come. True, we have seen that in the last para- 

 graph of the book all this was changed, and the varia- 



