104. Luck, or Cunning ? 
the other hand, there is indeed cunning, effort, and conse- 
quent use and disuse ; nor does he deny that these have 
produced some, and sometimes even an important, effect 
in modifying species, but he assigns by far the most im- 
portant 7éle in the whole scheme to natural selection, which, 
as I have already shown, must, with him, be regarded as a 
synonym for luck pure and simple. This, for reasons well 
shown by Mr. Spencer in the articles under consideration, 
is so untenable that it seems only possible to account for 
its having been advanced at all by supposing Mr. Darwin’s 
judgment to have been perverted by some one or more of 
the many causes that might tend to warp them. What the 
chief of those causes may have been I shall presently pense 
out. 
Buffon erred rather on the side of ignoring functionally 
produced modifications than of insisting on them. The 
main agency with him is the direct action of the environ- 
ment upon the organism. This, no doubt, is a flaw in 
Buffon’s immortal work, but it is one which Erasmus Darwin 
and Lamarck easily corrected; nor can we doubt that 
Buffon would have readily accepted their amendment if it 
had been suggested to him. Buffon did infinitely more in 
the way of discovering and establishing the theory of 
descent with modification than any one has ever done 
either before or since. He was too much occupied with 
proving the fact of evolution at all, to dwell as fully as 
might have been wished upon the details of the process 
whereby the amceba had become man, but we have already 
seen that he regarded inherited mutilation as the cause of 
establishing a new breed of dogs, and this is at any rate 
not laying much stress on functionally produced modifica- 
tions. Again, when writing of the dog, he speaks of 
variations arising ‘‘ by some chance common enough with 
nature,’”’* and clearly does not contemplate function as the 
sole cause of modification. Practically, though I grant I 
* See ‘‘ Evolution Old and New,” p. 122. 
