276 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
relative success or failure of such new forms as may be born into 
the world. It is the more important to remember this distinction, 
because it seems to me that Mr Darwin himself frequently forgets 
it. Not only does he speak of natural selection ‘‘producing” this 
and that modification of structure, but he undertakes to affirm of 
one class of changes that they can be produced, and of another 
class of changes that they cannot be produced, by this process.* 
Now, what are the changes for the preservation of which his 
theory does, in some sense, account ? They are such changes, and 
these only, as are of some direct use to the organism in the 
“ struggle for existence.” Any change which has not this direct 
value, is not provided for in the theory. All structures, 
therefore, are unaccounted for — not only as respects their origin, 
but even as respects their preservation — in which the variations 
have no other value than mere beauty or variety. Accordingly, 
Mr Darwin is tempted to deny that any such structures exist in 
nature. Now, I hold that any theory of which this denial is really 
a necessary part, is self-condemned. Yet a theory may be good as 
accounting for the preservation of some structures, although it fails 
to account in this respect for others. And so the fact that natural 
selection cannot have operated on structures of mere beauty and 
variety is no proof that the theory of natural selection is false, 
but only tliat it is incomplete. It does not account for the origin 
of any structure ; and it accounts for the preservation of only a 
certain number. Surely, then, Mr Darwin assigns to his “law” 
of natural selection a range far wider than really belongs to it, when, 
on the strength of it, he denies that beauty for its own sake can be 
an end or object in organic forms. He sa}^s — “ This doctrine, if 
true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory.” Why should this 
be fatal to his theory, except on the supposition that Natural 
Selection gives a complete account both of the origin of new forms, 
of which, in reality, it gives no account at ail, and of their preser- 
vation, of which it does give some account, but one which is only 
partial ? I dwell on this, because it lies at the very root of the 
question how far Mr Darwin’s theory can be said to suggest any- 
thing in the nature of a creative law of a kind to explain the 
^ Origin of Species, p. 200 (1st edition). 
