INITIAL VARIATIONS AND TOTAL EXPERIENCE 35 



So the banns between Lamarck and Darwin are published, 

 not for the first time of asking, and who shall say that theie is 

 cause or just impediment why these two should not be joined 

 together in holy matrimony ? 



I conclude this chapter with a passage from the life of Columbus 

 by Washington Irving which affords a fitting parallel from history 

 in the higher development and union of two formerly hostile 

 Kingdoms, and the moral of it is clear and simple. But as a 

 forensic junior I beg to enter a caveat to the effect that though the 

 name of Columbus occurs no suggestion is made of the discovery 

 of a New World. 



" It has been well observed of Ferdinand and Isabella that 

 " they lived together not like man and wife whose estates are in 

 " common, under the orders of the husband, but like two monarchs 

 " strictly allied. They had separate claims to sovereignty in 

 " virtue of their separate Kingdoms, and held separate councils. 

 " Yet they were so happily united by common views, common 

 " interests, and a great deference for each other, that this double 

 " administration never prevented a unity of purpose and action. 

 " All acts of sovereignty were executed in both their names ; all 

 " public writings subscribed with both their signatures ; their 

 " likenesses were stamped together on the public coin, and the 

 " royal seal displayed the united arms of Castile and Aragon." 



and able to puzzle a clever coiner who tries to copy them. We know the 

 rough hewing of the stone by the sculptor which follows his moulding of the 

 clay. And in Sacred Writ we read of a double process when the Hebrews 

 not content with their object of worship took the golden ear-rings of their 

 women and Aaron " received them at their hand and fashioned it with a 

 graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf." But as no conception of a 

 mould in biological matters, which connotes the rigid accuracy of the coiner's 

 mould, can represent the truth, the rougher and freer meaning of the term 

 is here employed. A similar double meaning is implicit in the metaphor 

 of the sieve, considered as a human utensil. I believe we owe this idea of a 

 sieve to Professor Thomson, but am not sure on this point. But I have not 

 been able to find any definition as to the way in which the sieve of natural 

 selection is held to act. A sieve is of course for sifting substances, and the 

 size of the mesh is adapted by us for the purpose we have in view. We may 

 want a sieve to hold back for us the fit or good and allow the unfit or bad to 

 pass through, for example wheat and chaff, or we may employ it to separate 

 sand for our purposes from fine gravel. The former is of course the most 

 common of the purposes for which a sieve is used. So here the comparison 

 of personal selection with the action of a sieve agrees with this aspect of a 

 sieve, the fit being retained and the unfit allowed to pass through, thus agree- 

 ing with that view of Spencer's of the survival of the fittest which is held by 

 most authorities to be more accurate than Darwin's Natural Selection. 



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