60 Professor Huxley's Darwinism. [February, 
variation is governed by law, and is determined in a much 
higher degree by the nature of the organisation, than by 
the nature of the conditions to which the varying being has 
been exposed ” (ii., 344). 
Truly there is some slight excuse for Prof. Huxley’s misin- 
terpretation, for Mr. Darwin does once affirm that “ every 
variation is either direCtly or indirectly caused by some 
change in the surrounding conditions ” (“ Variation under 
Domestication,” ii., 415), but insists so often that variations 
are very remotely related to changing conditions that he 
must have experienced some surprise when his authorised 
interpreter thus distorted his views. What can be more ex- 
plicit than the following ? “ We are driven to conclude that 
such peculiarities are not direCtly due to the aCtion of sur- 
rounding conditions, but to unknown laws acting upon the 
organisation or constitution of the individual, — that their 
production stands in hardly closer relation to the conditions 
of life than does life itself” (Id., i., 448, 449), “ life itself” 
being the Creator’s breath. 
Mr. Darwin’s real teaching is as follows : changed condi- 
tions, aCting often not indeed alone upon the individual, 
foetus, or otherwise, but upon its “ ancestors,” render the 
organisation plastic, variations being the result of a certain 
“ tendency to vary ” thus induced ; the nature of such vari- 
ations being likewise generally determined by the constitution 
of the subjects of the influence rather than by the peculiar 
nature of such influence. This Prof. Huxley abbreviates 
into the statement that “ Mr. Darwin . . . seeks for the 
principal, if not the only, cause of variation in the influence 
of changing conditions.” 
To remark that “ it is quite conceivable that every species 
tends to produce varieties of a limited number and kind, and 
that the effeCt of natural selection is to favour the develop- 
ment of some of these, while it opposes the development of 
others, along their predetermined lines of modification ” 
(“ Science and Culture,” p. 307), is either to say that it is 
quite conceivable that Mr. Darwin’s view may be correct, or 
that Teleology is conceivable. The truth that “ the im- 
portance of natural selection will not be impaired, even if” 
Darwinism be proved true (Id., p. 307), must puzzle fellow- 
interpreters ; while the alternative conception of a Master 
of the Mint manufacturing, “ along their predetermined 
lines,” coins which he knew would be obsolete when ready 
for currency, is as paradoxical as the converse proposition, 
namely, that a variety may be “ perpetuated or even intensi- 
fied when selective conditions are indifferent, or perhaps 
