Property and Common Sense_ 113 
the right half pass for the whole, but the wrong half not 
infrequently passes current for it also, without being chal- 
lenged and found out till, as it were, the accounts come to be 
balanced, and it is found that they will not do so. 
Variations are an organism’s way of getting over an 
unexpected discrepancy between its resources as shown by 
the fly-leaves of its own cheques and the universe’s pass- 
book ; the universe is generally right, or would be upheld as 
right if the matter were to come before the not too incor- 
ruptible courts of nature, and in nine cases out of ten the 
organism has made the error in its own favour, so that it 
must now pay or die. It can only pay by altering its 
mode of life, and how long is it likely to be before a new 
departure in its mode of life comes out in its own person 
and in those of its family ? Granted it will at first come out 
in their appearance only, but there can be no change in 
appearance without some slight corresponding organic 
modification. In practice there is usually compromise in 
these matters. The universe, if it does not give an organism 
short shrift and eat it at once, will commonly abate some- 
thing of its claim; it gets tricked out of an additional 
moiety by the organism ; the organism really does pay 
something by way of changed habits ; this results in varia- 
tion, in virtue of which the accounts are cooked, cobbled, 
and passed by a series of those miracles of inconsistency 
which was call compromises, and after this they cannot be 
reopened—not till next time. 
Surely of the two factors which go to the making up of 
development, cunning is the one more proper to be insisted 
on as determining the physical and psychical well or ill 
being, and hence, ere long, the future form of the organism. 
We can hardly open a newspaper without seeing some sign 
of this; take, for example, the following extract from a 
letter in the Times of the day on which I am writing 
(February 8, 1886)—‘‘ You may pass along a road which 
divides a settlement of Irish Celts from one of Germans, 
H 
