22 Luck, or Cunning ? 
strictest sense design, than any speculative leap of fancy, 
however bold and even at times successful. 
From Lamarck I went on to Buffon and Erasmus Darwin 
—better men both of them than Lamarck, and treated by 
him much as he has himself been treated by those who 
have come after him—and found that the system of these 
three writers, if considered rightly, and if the corollary 
that heredity is only a mode of memory were added, 
would get us out of our dilemma as regards descent. and 
design, and enable us to keep both. We could do this by 
making the design manifested in organism more like the 
only design of which we know anything, and therefore the 
only design of which we ought to speak—I mean our 
own. 
Our own design is tentative, and neither very far-fore- 
seeing nor very retrospective ; it is a little of both, but 
much of neither; it is like a comet with a little light in 
front of the nucleus and a good deal more behind it, which 
ere long, however, fades away into the darkness ; it is of 
a kind that, though a little wise before the event, is apt to 
be much wiser after it, and to profit even by mischance so 
long as the disaster is not an overwhelming one ; neverthe- 
less, though it is so interwoven with luck, there is no doubt 
about its being design ; why, then, should the design which 
must have attended organic development be other than 
this ? If the thing that has been is the thing that also shall 
be, must not the thing which is be that which also has been ? 
Was there anything in the phenomena of organic life to 
militate against such a view of design as this? Not only 
was there nothing, but this view made things plain, as the 
connecting of heredity and memory had already done, 
which till now had been without explanation. Rudimen- 
tary organs were no longer a hindrance to our acceptance 
of design, they became weighty arguments in its favour. 
I therefore wrote “ Evolution Old and New,” with the 
object partly of backing up “ Life and Habit,” and showing 
