HEREDITY, \^xUaAT10X 115 



these characteristics, whether physical or mental, are combined 

 together iii an infinite variety of ways, as if each of them 

 varied independently with no constant or even usual associa- 

 tion with any of the others; whence arises that wonderful 

 diversity of appearance, attitudes, expression, ability, intellect, 

 emotion, and what we term as a wdiole character, which adds 

 so much to the possibilities and enjoyments of social life, and 

 gives us in their higher developments such mountain peaks of 

 human nature as were manifested in Socrates and Plato, Homer 

 and Virgil, Alexander and Phidias, Buddha and Confucius in 

 the older world ; in Shakespeare and ^N^ewton, Michael Angelo, 

 Faradav, and Darwin in more recent times. 



And with all this endless variation wherever we look for it, 

 we are told again and again in frequent reiteration, that varia- 

 tion is minute, is even infinitesimal, and only occurs at long 

 intervals in single individuals, and that it is quite insufficient 

 for natural selection to work with in the production of new 

 species. 



This blindness, no doubt, arose in some persons from the 

 ingrained idea of man's special creation, at all events, and that 

 it was almost impious to suppose that these variations could 

 have had anything to do with his development from some 

 lower forms. But among naturalists the idea long prevailed, 

 as it does still to some extent, that in a state of nature there 

 is little variation. Yet here, too, they might have found a 

 clue in the fact, so often quoted, that a shepherd knows every 

 individual sheep in his flock, and the huntsman every dog in 

 his well-matched pack of hounds, and this notwithstanding 

 that in both cases these animals are selected breeds in which 

 all large deviations from the type form are usually rejected. 



Of late years, however, variations occurring in a state of 

 nature have been carefullv examined and measured, and it is 

 to some of these that w^e will now appeal for the proof of ever- 

 present variation of the character and amount needed for the 

 production of new species and of every kind of adaptation by 

 means of natural selection or the survival of the fittest. Be- 



