158 Luck, or Cunning ? 
the vices of Mr. Darwin’s later style—passing this over as 
having been written some twenty years before the “ Origin 
of Species ”’—the last paragraph of the “ Origin of Species ” 
itself is purely Lamarckian and Erasmus-Darwinian. It 
declares the laws in accordance with which organic forms 
assumed their present shape to be—“ Growth with repro- 
duction ; Variability from the indirect and direct action 
of the external conditions of life and from use and disuse, 
&c.”* Wherein does this differ from the confession of 
faith made by Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck? Where are 
the accidental fortuitous, spontaneous variations now ? 
And if they are not found important enough to demand 
mention in this peroration and stretto, as it were, of the 
whole matter, in which special prominence should be given 
to the special feature of the work, where ought they to be 
made important ? 
Mr. Darwin immediately goes on: “‘ A ratio of existence 
so high as to lead to a struggle for life, and as a consequence 
to natural selection, entailing divergence of character and 
the extinction of less improved forms ;” so that natural 
selection turns up after all. Yes—in the letters that com- 
pose it, but not in the spirit ; not in the special sense up to 
this time attached to it in the ‘‘ Origin of Species.” The 
expression as used here is one with which Erasmus Darwin 
would have found little fault, for it means not as elsewhere 
in Mr. Darwin’s book and on his title-page the preservation 
of ‘‘ favoured ” or lucky varieties, but the preservation of 
varieties that have come to be varieties through the causes 
assigned in the preceding two or three lines of Mr. Darwin’s 
sentence ; and these are mainly functional or Erasmus- 
Darwinian ; for the indirect action of the conditions of life 
is mainly functional, and the direct action is admitted on 
all hands to be but small. 
It now appears more. plainly, as insisted upon on an 
earlier page, that there is not one natural selection and one 
* “ Origin of Species,” ed.i., p. 490. 
