88 Luck, or Cunning ? 
and one survival of the fittest only, but two natural selec- 
tions, and two survivals of the fittest, the one of which may 
be objected to as an expression more fit for religious and 
general literature than for science, but may still be admitted 
as sound in intention, while the other, inasmuch as it sup- 
poses accident to be the main purveyor of variations, has 
no correspondence with the actual course of things ; for 
if the variations are matters of chance or hazard uncon- 
nected with any principle of constant application, they will 
not occur steadily enough, throughout a sufficient number 
of successive generations, nor to a sufficient number of 
individuals for many generations together at the same time 
and place, to admit of the fixing and permanency of modifi- 
cation at all. The one theory of natural selection, therefore, 
may, and indeed will, explain the facts that surround us, 
whereas the other will not. Mr. Charles Darwin’s contribu- 
tion to the theory of evolution was not, as is commonly 
supposed, “‘ natural selection,” but the hypothesis that 
natural selection from variations that are in the main 
fortuitous could accumulate and result in specific and 
generic differences. 
In the foregoing paragraph I have given the point of 
difference between Mr. Charles Darwin and his predecessors. 
Why, I wonder, have neither he nor any of his exponents 
put this difference before us in such plain words that we 
should readily apprehend it? Erasmus Darwin and 
Lamarck were understood by all who wished to under- 
stand them ; why is it that the misunderstanding of Mr. 
Darwin’s “‘ distinctive feature ’’ should have been so long 
and obstinate ? Why is it that, no matter how much 
writers like Mr. Grant Allen and Professor Ray Lankester 
may say about ‘“‘ Mr. Darwin’s master-key,”’ nor how many 
more like hyperboles they brandish, they never put a 
succinct résumé of Mr. Darwin’s theory side by side with a 
similar vésumé of his grandfather’s and Lamarck’s ? Neither 
Mr. Darwin himself, not any of those to whose advocacy 
