Darwin’s Variations 163 
chiefly through selection in the ordinary course of nature 
from among spontaneous variations, aided in an unimportant 
manner by variations which qua us ave spontaneous. Never- 
theless, though these spontaneous variations are still so 
trifling in effect that they only aid spontaneous variations 
in an unimportant manner, in his earlier editions Mr. 
Darwin thought them still less important than he does 
now. 
This comes of tinkering. We do not know whether we 
are on our heads or our heels. We catch ourselves repeating 
“important,” “ unimportant,” “ unimportant,” “ import- 
ant,” like the King when addressing the jury in “ Alice in 
Wonderland ;”’ and yet this is the book of which Mr. Grant 
Allen * says that it is “one of the greatest, and most 
learned, the most lucid, the most logical, the most crushing, 
the most conclusive, that the world has ever seen. Step by 
step, and principle by principle, it proved every point in its 
progress triumphantly before it went on to the next. So 
vast an array of facts so thoroughly in hand had never 
before been mustered and marshalled in favour of any bio- 
logical theory.”’ The book and the eulogy are well mated. 
T see that in the paragraph following on the one just 
quoted, Mr. Allen says, that “‘ to the world at large Dar- 
winism and evolution became at once synonymous terms.” 
Certainly it was no fault of Mr. Darwin’s if they did not, 
but I will add more on this head presently ; for the moment, 
returning to Mr. Darwin, it is hardly credible, but it is 
nevertheless true, that Mr Darwin begins the paragraph 
next following on the one on which I have just reflected 
so severely, with the words, “It can hardly be supposed 
that a false theory would explain in so satisfactory a manner 
as does the theory of natural selection, the several large 
classes of facts above specified.” If Mr. Darwin found the 
large classes of facts “‘ satisfactorily’ explained by the 
survival of the luckiest irrespectively of the cunning which 
* “ Charles Darwin,” p. 113. 
