Grant Allen’s “Charles Darwin” 217 
arisen in any individual. The one is the Darwinian way, by 
spontaneous variation, that is to say, by variation due to 
minute physical circumstances affecting the individual in 
the germ. The other is the Spencerian way, by functional 
increment, that is to say, by the effect of increased use and 
constant exposure to varying circumstances during con- 
scious life.” 
Mr. Allen calls this the Spencerian view, and so it is in so 
far as that Mr. Spencer has adopted it. Most people will 
call it Lamarckian. This, however, is a detail. Mr. Allen 
continues :— 
“T venture to think that the first way, if we look it 
clearly in the face, will be seen to be practically unthink- 
able ; and that we have no alternative, therefore, but to 
accept the second.” 
I like our looking a “ way ” which is “‘ practically un- 
thinkable”’ “clearly in the face.” I particularly like 
“ practically unthinkable.’ I suppose we can think it in 
theory, but not in practice. I like almost everything Mr. 
Allen says or does ; it is not necessary to go far in search 
of his good things ; dredge up any bit of mud from him at 
random and we are pretty sure to find an oyster with a 
pearl in it, if we look it clearly in the face ; I mean, there 
is sure to be something which will be at any rate “‘ almost ” 
practically unthinkable. But however this may be, when 
Mr. Allen wrote his article in “‘ Mind” two years ago, he 
was in substantial agreement with myself about the value 
of natural selection as a means of modification—by natural 
selection I mean, of course, the commonly known Charles- 
Darwinian natural selection from fortuitous variations ; 
now, however, in 1885, he is all for this same natural selec- 
tion again, and in the preface to his ‘‘ Charles Darwin” 
writes (after a handsome acknowledgment of ‘‘ Evolution 
Old and New ”’) that he “ differs from ”’ me “ fundamentally 
in” my “estimate of the worth of Charles Darwin’s 
distinctive discovery of natural selection.” 
