The Question at Issue 71 
of natural selection, and in opposition to the views taken 
by myself ; if they are not to be left in possession of the 
field the sooner they are met the better. 
Stripped of detail the point at issue is this ;—whether 
luck or cunning is the fitter to be insisted on as the main 
means of organic development. Erasmus Darwin and 
Lamarck answered this question in favour of cunning. 
They settled it in favour of intelligent perception of the 
situation—within, of course, ever narrower and narrower 
limits as organism retreats farther backwards from our- 
selves—and persistent effort to turn it to account. They 
made this the soul of all development whether of mind or 
body. 
And they made it, like all other souls, liable to aberration 
both for better and worse. They held that some organisms 
show more ready wit and savoir faive than others; that 
some give more proofs of genius and have more frequent 
happy thoughts than others, and that some have even gone 
through waters of misery which they have used as wells. 
The sheet anchor both of Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck 
is in good sense and thrift ; still they are aware that money 
has been sometimes made by “ striking oil,” and ere now 
been transmitted to descendants in spite of the haphazard 
way in which it was originally acquired. No speculation, 
no commerce ; ‘‘ nothing venture, nothing have,” is as true 
for the development of organic wealth as for that of any 
other kind, and neither Erasmus Darwin nor Lamarck 
hesitated about admitting that highly picturesque and 
romantic incidents of developmental venture do from time 
to time occur in the race histories even of the dullest and 
most dead-level organisms under the name of “ sports ;”’ 
but they would hold that even these occur most often and 
most happily to those that have persevered in well-doing 
for some generations. Unto the organism that hath is 
given, and from the organism that hath not is taken away ; 
so that even “‘ sports’ prove to be only a little off thrift, 
